Latam Insights: Coinbase Co-Founder Eyes Venezuela as Grupo Salinas Embraces Stablecoins

Coinbase Co-Founder Meets with US and Venezuelan Officials in Major Investment Push

Fred Ersham, co-founder of U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Paradigm, a venture capital firm, has traveled to Venezuela several times and has been meeting with government officials, including interim president Delcy Rodriguez and U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, according to Bloomberg.

Ersham, with a net worth of $2.6 billion, would be interested in investing in several sectors of the Venezuelan economy, including fintech and payments, but also in energy and gas.

He appeared this week in a tech event organized by one of the main state-owned banks, Banco de Venezuela, to promote the country’s potential to become “the best country in Latam.”

Mexican Giant Grupo Salinas Taps Anchorage Digital for Stablecoin Payments

Grupo Salinas, one of the largest business conglomerates in Mexico, with dozens of companies, has partnered with Anchorage Digital, a cryptocurrency services company, to integrate stablecoins in its cross-border payment flows. Coinpro, a cryptocurrency platform owned by the group, will integrate Anchorage’s Stablecoin Solutions for Banks to “compress settlement cycles” in its cross-border operations.

Anchorage claims that its stablecoin solution offers international institutions the ability to include stablecoin-based operations with embedded compliance for cross-border payments and treasury operations.

Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, stressed that stablecoins were moving to become core bank infrastructure. “Grupo Salinas shares our conviction that digital dollars will power the next generation of cross-border finance, and we’re proud to partner in bringing that vision to life,” he declared.

Brazil Slaps Banco Topazio With $3.2M Fine and 2-Year Crypto Trading Ban

The Administrative Sanctioning Process Decision Committee (Copas) of the Central Bank of Brazil imposed a two-year ban on Banco Topazios’ foreign cryptocurrency trading operations due to irregularities in transactions accounting for billions of dollars.

The committee determined that Banco Topazio disregarded compliance measures between October 2020 and September 2021, when it executed cryptocurrency purchases without executing procedures to determine the qualification of the third parties benefiting from these operations.

Banco Topazio’s trading volume during that period reached $1.7 billion involving 15 legal entities without notifying of atypical operations. Topazio was fined $3.2 million for irregularities in determining customers’ financial capacities, deficiencies in its registration procedures, and failure in determining AML/CFT (Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) risks.