May 15, 2019 Article

How Argentina's Impact Investing Model could Catalyze Blockchain Adoption

Impact investing is increasingly being embraced by companies across the world. This investing model is proving worthwhile because it gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to develop solutions to real problems in their society in a sustainable way while generating financial returns.
Blockchain technology could prove to be a crucial tool in the impact investing model. The technology has been lauded for its ability to solve some of the status-quo problems and inefficiencies in most aspects of our economies. It is for this reason, that the government of Argentina has agreed to co-invest in blockchain projects supported by Binance Labs and LatamEx.

Beneficial Agreement
In a four year agreement, the government of Argentina has committed to provide up to $50,000 in matching investments to programs supported by the social impact and investment arm of Binance and the Latin America cryptocurrency exchange. Each year, the government will fund a minimum of three and a maximum of ten local blockchain projects through an Argentine blockchain accelerator, Founders Lab.
Argentina has proven to be one countries in Latin America that are receptive to the cryptocurrency industry. According to coinatmradar, the country has the second most bitcoin ATMs in the region. Due to the volatility of the peso, cryptocurrency use has been rising constantly. Last month, the country’s state transport card began accepting bitcoin. Additionally, the country accepted $7,100 worth of agricultural chemical goods in bitcoin from Paraguay.
As such, Buenos Aires has been chosen as one of six locations for the Binance Labs investment program 2 that kicked off on March 25th.

Catalyzing Adoption
In an already enabling and practising environment, local entrepreneurs will be able to create local solutions to local problems through the incubation program. Therefore, the agreement between Argentina's government and Binance Labs can only be beneficial to the country, the region and the cryptocurrency industry in general as blockchain adoption becomes product-market led.
Jess Davis, CEO of Uberstate holds that through collaborative financing, greater economic empowerment opportunities will be realized, driving blockchain adoption to a whole new level. In addition, Davis warns that countries that reject the technology could find themselves falling behind despite their population advantage.
He notes, “Blockchain will be canonized in history as the most collaborative form of finance. It will allow for greater opportunities economically as adoption comes on. Countries that reject this formative model of finance will fall behind no matter the population size. The demystified approach to governance, compliance, and education will bring alternative methods of finance possible globally.”


  Disclaimer: David Drake is on the advisory board for most of the firms mentioned or quoted in this article.