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With more than 70 million customers, Mercadolibre, one of Latam's largest e-commerce platforms, has announced key investments in two exchange platforms. On January 20th, the Latam unicorn revealed that it had purchased shares in 2TM, the parent firm of Mercado Bitcoin, one of Brazil's most popular exchanges with three million users. Paxos, a stablecoin issuer and blockchain infrastructure provider, was also acquired by the corporation. Although the amounts invested in each of these companies were not disclosed, the company stated that the investments were made to 'stimulate the regional ecosystem, allowing it to offer increasingly relevant products and services to Latin American entrepreneurs and users, who are at the heart of its strategy.' Andre Chaves, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development for Mercadolibre, stated:
“2TM and Paxos share this vision and our conviction to continue innovating to offer solutions which improve people’s lives, generate value and drive the development of our region. We want everyone to be able to access the digital assets market in a simple and transparent way, this is our goal.”
Previous Relations With Crypto
The company has a long history with cryptocurrency. For quite some time, Mecadolibre has been a cryptocurrency-friendly company. The investment in Paxos was preceded by a collaboration formed last year that allowed certain of the company's clients to invest in cryptocurrencies directly through Mercadolibre's platform via Mercadopago in Brazil. The company announced at the time that it will expand the service to other nations later this year. In addition, the corporation is one of the few in Latin America to have declared its crypto holdings as part of its treasury. When it released its financial reports for Q1 2021, it revealed that it had purchased about $8 million in Bitcoin. However, the behemoth has yet to allow clients to pay for goods and services using cryptocurrency, although it is its primary business, and it has not set a likely time frame for doing so.