Argentine exchange Buenbit adds more stablecoins due to growing popularity

Buenos Aires-based exchange Buenbit has added four new stablecoins to its platform, citing growing popularity for the digital asset class.

These stablecoins keep parity with the U.S. dollar. These include Tether (USDT), Circle (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD) and TerraUSD (UST). The additions expand Buenbit’s portfolio to 12 digital currencies. 

Buenbit, founded in 2018, was one of the first local exchanges to offer Argentines the option of using stablecoins as a way to avoid the high inflation of their local peso currency. That year it started offering MakerDAO’s decentralized stablecoin DAI, whose value is equal to the U.S. dollar and uses crypto assets as collateral. 

“We start from the premise that a stablecoin like DAI, having parity with the dollar, would serve as a natural gateway to the crypto world, since historically Argentines have used the dollar as a form of savings and as a way to protect themselves from economic factors such as inflation and devaluation,” Buenbit said in a statement shared with The Block. “Today, we can say that we weren’t wrong.”

Buenbit has been expanding its presence in Latin America as well as the number of cryptocurrencies in its portfolio over the past few months, following an $11 million Series A raise last June led by London-based Libertus Capital. It opened its platform to individual traders in Peru last October, and expanded to Mexico last November. 

Earlier this month, Buenbit announced that it would add five new cryptocurrencies to its platform, in addition to DAI, Bitcoin and Ethereum. They include DOT (Polkadot), SOL (Solana), MATIC (Polygon), BNB (Binance Coin) y ADA (Cardano).

Buenbit is also giving its users the option of using decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to generate interest on their crypto investments, with rates varying depending on the cryptocurrency.