What X Payments Means for Crypto Adoption in Argentina

9 months ago 6

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X recently secured a money transmitter license in Utah, shortly after Elon Musk unveiled his Dogecoin holdings. The license comes as Musk seeks to turn X into an “everything app” modeled after the likes of Tencent’s WeChat as countries like Argentina look to adopt crypto.

In securing the Utah license, X can now offer money transmitter services in 15 US states.

How X Plans Pave the Way for Crypto

In a blog post last week, the company said it plans to compete with Visa and PayPal. It laid the “groundwork for a global town square” in 2023, emphasizing improved user experience and infrastructure changes. Now, it will focus on artificial intelligence and peer-to-peer payments to bring “the power of living more of your life in one place.”

Musk suggested that PayPal was a less complete company for not implementing a similar payments roadmap. Musk said he and a colleague came up with the idea while working at PayPal.

“The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000. And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago.”

X could use stablecoin rails depending on how quickly the company wants to settle payments. Visa recently adopted a high-performance blockchain for its partners to send and receive USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. The transaction speed was over 400 transactions per second.

Argentina’s Bitcoin Bias Could Welcome X Payments

X discontinued a Bitcoin money transfer service in April 2023 due to insufficient awareness and demand. The company rolled out the Bitcoin service in select countries, including the US and Argentina.

X payments could gain traction if launched in Argentina. President Javier Milei said in a press release that he supported “the freedom to transact,” a philosophy born in the Austrian School of Economics. Milei’s statements came ahead of his trip to the World Economic Forum Summit in Davos, Switzerland.

The freedom to transact philosophy respects individuals’ rights to transact in whatever medium they choose. Possible choices could include Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, or even barter trade.

The president is seeking ways to remedy Argentina’s economy after years of mismanagement significantly devalued the Argentine peso. However, his support of Bitcoin is at odds with the centralized model favored by the Davos elite.

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