Defi in LatAm: a ladder out of Emerging Status

Transcript

everyone thank you so much for coming uh my name is mila rioja i'm actually from brazil i am with cello foundation and what i would like to discuss with you today is more of a proposition of maybe us working together towards the advancement of latin america the region that i love so this whoopsie this was supposed to be where's your cursor

let's do it again okay perfect so this is the agenda uh for the day today ideally i wanted us to take a pic at latin america together mainly at two different aspects the first one is like what's crypto like in latin america a bit is going to be written down there uh some other bits i'm going to be talking then i would like to show you some of the events that are taking place there not only ethereum events but who are hosting these events what are they like and who are the people engaging it afterwards i would like to show some real world use cases because adoption is not only high in latin america but also we have very interesting things that are going on through the works of different

developers working on number one source solutions and thirdly based on everything that we see here together maybe make you guys an invitation which is like considering the statues of the development of latin america everything that is possible there the amount of things that we still have to build would you be interested in taking a pic and maybe building something for our community or with our community um so yeah let's take a peek at latin america together uh so you can see here behind me some different news outlets right saying wow take a look at the boom that latin america is having towards crypto check analysis has done like its usual annual report and it has said that we host around a little bit over nine

percent of total transactions in crypto altogether it's billions of dollars flowing in and out of different countries and mostly in a peer-to-peer format this is going to vary a lot depending on the country that we are talking about in latin america for instance i come from brazil and brazil is one of the most like institutional markets for crypto less than uh one month ago i was with the president of the central bank and he was saying cbdc is real because we want d5 and this is his words we want to have cbdc to allow people to do defy and if you want to do your stable currencies why don't have a bit of cbdc of a country inside whatever you're building

so this was the invitation that he was making for the developer community not only from brazil but worldwide i've been a few times for instance to el salvador i was able to host a hackathon there and also to talk to the community and they are building different solutions of course at the first moment they were super focused on bitcoin adoption but now they're even discussing a stable asset legislation and how they can make like more advancements by working with the different regions colombia for instance is a super thrilling market i don't know if any of you will be attending devcon but the community there it's super savvy on crypto they do a lot of peer-to-peer uh transactions their wallets uh they're

doing like real-world transactions too and paying for services in colombia at the moment other than that for instance venezuela they have amazing developers they are behind some of the leading wallets that are being used throughout latin america argentina is home for you know as you know awesome developers that are involved in so many projects they're also very good with ui and ux and the way of making public what they do and what they discover we all have and of course there are other countries but we all have things in common and one of those things in common is crypto for us means a lot of things including protecting our community from the deflation that our currencies they

survive or they go through through the years so crypto is not only about like it is of course about building different things but it's also like a way out of poverty in some cases it's a possibility for you to connect with someone in a remote region that doesn't have access to the different resources that you have so this is a bit of what's going on in latin america uh most recently up here this was um a meet-up that was held actually in barcelona but this is latime founders there were over 50 latam founders inside the room in barcelona discussing different things and what to do ethereum rio was a huge success uh it was organized by a few people who are

here today in this conference and it was a super interesting opportunity to see different stakeholders and players talking two weeks ago i was at blockchain summit panama and blockchain summit panama was super interesting for one thing that i'll be talking towards the end of this presentation there not only like the government has written in their legislation towards bitcoin and ethereum so this is true and several countries of latin america like a wider adoption not only by the builders community but also from like more institutional players and so on and so forth some of the good and interesting use cases that are taking place in latin america i'll be exploring here uh but i

will do it kind of from like a personal view based on what i'm working on so uh within cello cello for those who don't know it's a layer one uh blockchain that was developed it's proof of stake it is a fork of ethereum it has like full evm compatibility and upon the community's choices the validators can upgrade it to allow for stable assets and up until this moment there's three stable assets uh sell dollars sell euros and sell highs the community in colombia wants to do a seller colombian peso to experiment with different things so these are the assets and these are the use cases that we and our community have been testing out so far so impact market is the largest ubi

protocol in the world so they are disbursing um universal basic income through different countries and very much focused on latin america they developed this open source now they have like different types of advancements in their projects good dollar has like joined on cello the mission to disperse ubi and what's happening for instance in the favelas in the brazil because of this is awesome people are receiving crypto in the favelas and they are exchanging crypto amongst themselves either for services or for goods or making small payments and they are using it for saving purposes this is super interesting it's a use case that happened during the pandemics so as a way to enable people to redeem medications like

crypto cards they were used like vouchers and an individual could redeem something at a drugstore during uh the period of need in the pandemics some companies ruin some dubs for instance like bit wage uh they are developing different resources such as this opportunity to get paid and to get your wages paid in crypto as far as i'm concerned what they do is basically um focus in markets like brazil mexico argentina and colombia where they see a lot of traction yeah you have saving use cases you also have some d5 protocols and pools already working um there's valora that also enables like different uh opportunities

such as sending crypto on and off cello and one of the things that i really wanted to show you because i think it might be interesting let's see if i can do it in here already my voice is right but i need to make sure i put this video here can you see it so this is an integration that was done by a developer in brazil you basically yeah you basically choose your crypto uh and this is not only sello on your

wallet you point it towards a pos machine and you're able to pay everything that you buy in 1.6 million merchants in five seconds so this is super this is super interesting and i think it's a good way you know to show uh how the crypto adoption is changing brazil were you able to sit out is it replying once more cool things that you can do in latin america with crypto you can get in and out of your bank on and off ramp in less than like maybe 15 minutes depending on the country where you are so get any crypto you go to a bank or the other way around and

you have the opportunity to you know have other use cases for what you're doing so based on all the above uh and what i have discussed what i wanted to propose to you guys here is the following one we understand that is there is a 300 billion dollar market in terms of like crypto adoption throughout latin america two we understand that the latin american individuals they are adopting crypto whether from a community standpoint or from developers standpoint everybody's super excited into like developing other solutions um i met maybe five brazilians here uh between yesterday and today i'm sure there are many more and many other people from latin america like argentina

and columbus colombians and all of these people they're like super hard thinking about how to you know solve some of the issues that we have in our countries but i would also like to add a different component and this is where i'm going to link back to the experience that i just had in panama two weeks ago so i joined panama and we were there discussing refi regenerative finances right and this has everything to do with some of the talks that initiated today today and while i was at the booth at the stand attending the population one of the individuals approached me and he said do you know what panama means and we were talking about like creating positive externalities what is the best way you know to use backup assets for d5

protocols or for different stable assets and he approached me and he said panama the word is translated to an abundance in butterflies and fishes the whole country was created based on the notion of an exuberant the exuberant existence of natural capital so if we look back to our histories uh and i can say that very loud and clear for latin america we are going to figure out and realize that one thing that we have in common it's tremendous and vast cultural heritage we also have tremendous and vast nature capital however the logic of exploring all of this

due to the way of you know how the colonies have occurred and so on and so forth have been in a way not to leave any of this like profits into our countries but also not to leave any advancements in a sustainable manner i know this may be a little bit like disrupting but we are here to build other ways of doing things so the challenge would be can we rethink the way economies are done in latin america can we preserve the nature capital can we preserve the history can we preserve the heritage that we have within our countries and make that a way to advance us out of something that i

personally don't agree which is our placement as like underdeveloped or emerging uh companies technologies people countries so this is my invitation for uh you today if you'd like to further connect this is my information um it's been a pleasure to be joined by you i'll be outside if anybody wants to talk a little about this thank you thank you mila i think we have time for maybe one or two questions any questions out there come on gigantic here we go hello thank you so much for the

opportunity of making the questions especially being from argentina and my question would be understanding is a noble purpose an idea to an invitation to work together what or which do you think would be the main issue to address to work better and together into the same goal this is a very good question especially if we consider the current scenario that we are undergoing latin america in economic like aspects right argentina is undergoing number of time uh brazil the same inflation is very high in all of those countries in different rates and maturities i do think we have one barrier that we don't address much uh commonly which is

the language right i speak portuguese you speak spanish and sometimes we cannot like find ourselves in the middle of this path not because we don't want but maybe we are just attached you know to other ways of watching and seeing and perceiving latin america so i think the first like challenge to be overcome is how we from latin america see ourselves and divide ourselves based on things that for me they don't make much sense the second thing that i think it's a very interesting thing to you know think is how to make the serious business like defy business with nature back capital and so on and so forth approachable and understandable and like lean you know this is what we are doing this is what you get this is

are the rules and these are the individuals involved because we always face a crisis of um [Music] how do we say this a trust crisis right in respect to what we do there and this has a name which is called like the underdog syndrome sometimes we see things coming from you know other countries or other things and we say yeah that's cool that stopped and sometimes if an argentinian or one brazilian pushes this forward we don't see the same way and the third and last thing that i would say it's actually like mobilizing the international uh working capital and social capital and also the brains in the minds of the people to fall in love with causes and to adapt a market that is so ready so

ready to make sure that we are you know working together and developing together so these are the three things that i would be looking for and i would love to start building with you so thank you amina okay we're going to move on to our next speaker so you can continue please the discussion outside and stay and join us for more talks thank you again [Applause]