Within the framework of tech forum 2024, an event that occurred in Argentina on October 19 celebrating “disruptive technologies,” Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Cardano, had some words for the La Plata nation.
In his speech, which was recorded on the webHoskinson said he was surprised that Argentina had contributed to the development of Bitcoin since 2012. Afterwards, he issued some words of gratitude: “from our industry to you, thank you for being part and thank you for the great contributions.”
“It’s so good to be here in Buenos Aires. You know, I love this place. The first time I came here was in 2016,” commented the Cardano CEO. Then, he remembers a conversation with the former chief executive of Input Output (IOHK), a company of which he is a co-founder:
“We said, it would be pretty fun if we can find people and a good place to travel. And he said: well, it would be either Chile or Argentina. I asked him, well what’s the difference? He told me: you want to be in Argentina. He came, and said: there is a great Bitcoin community in Argentina. And it is a very old community. I said to him: what do you mean? He said: they have been building software for Bitcoin since 2012. It turned out that one of the first mobile wallets developed for bitcoin, Copay, developed here in Buenos Aires, by a small team.
Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Cardano.
Copay, Argentine bitcoin wallet initiative
As CriptoNoticias reported, Copay was a wallet created in Argentina that was available for all major computer operating systems and for Chrome. A person who formed the team of this wallet announced in their repository the rebranding, after which Copay became Bitpay.
This application allowed you to create personal or shared wallets, today called multi-signature wallets. Already in 2016, it allowed adjusting the amount to pay in a bitcoin transaction. Also the buying and selling of bitcoins through the Glidera and Coinbase services. This wallet and the company that created it They are today known as Bitpay.
Hoskinson continues: “At the time, Bitpay was one of the largest cryptocurrency companies. They were based in Atlanta, Georgia, and this was before Coinbase, Consensys, Ethereum, and all these things. The developers are still there, they are still integrated.”
Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. Consensys, for its part, is the company that created the popular MetaMask wallet, a multi-chain wallet based on Ethereum.
Other contributions to Bitcoin made by Argentina
Apart from Copay, today Bitpay, Argentina has seen contributions to the Bitcoin ecosystem born.
One of them is Rootstock (RSK), a programmable second layer with smart contracts that is anchored to Bitcoin. According to its official website, it was the first sidechain created on Bitcoin. Among other functions, this network allows convert bitcoin (BTC) into RSK Smart Bitcoins (RBTC), in a 1:1 ratio.
This sidechain was co-founded by an Argentinian, Sergio Damian Lerner, who joined the Bitcoin community in 2011. Lerner contributed to Bitcoin Corethe main program that runs cryptoactive nodes, revealing 9 vulnerabilities in the protocol.
Argentina has also contributed with exchange houses or exchanges. One of them is Ripio, founded in 2013, which has achieved importance in several South American countries. Ripio began offering a digital wallet service, and evolved to include various cryptocurrency services.
Another fundamental contribution from Argentina is Labitconf, founded by Rodolfo Andragnes, who registered the domain bitcoins.com in the 2000s before Bitcoin the cryptoactive was born. LABITCONF, which means Latin American Bitcoin Conferenceis one of the most important events on Bitcoin and blockchain in Latin America, and possibly the oldest. It was created in 2013.
Argentina has also given the world initiatives such as Bitcoineta, an educational project created by the NGO Bitcoin Argentina, in 2018, which has toured Latin America.
