The Argentine cryptocurrency platform, Ripio, announced the launch of stablecoins backed 1:1 in the main fiat currencies of Latin America, starting with the Argentine peso (ARS).
This crypto asset, which maintains the same price as the Argentine pesoit’s called wARS. At the moment, it works as a token available on the Ethereum, World Chain and Base networks.
Ripio hopes that its use will facilitate local operations, as well as the next Latin stablecoins it launches. Their plan is to expand this initiative to currencies of other countries in the coming monthsas reported in a statement sent to CriptoNoticias.
«The launch of these local stablecoins, starting with wARS, marks a milestone not only for Ripio but also for the entire Latin American digital financial ecosystem. “We are creating a new standard for payments, remittances and services on blockchain, with currencies that are part of the daily lives of millions of people,” explained Sebastián Serrano, CEO and co-founder of Ripio.
According to the company, the main use cases of these new stablecoins will be digital payments, including with QR in the physical world, cross-border payments between companies, individuals or financial institutions located in different countries and generation of returns within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
This initiative It occurs in a context of global growth of the stablecoin marketmainly extended by those that maintain the same price as the US dollar (USD) such as tether (USDT) and usd coin (USDC).
Ripio emphasizes that, according to the World Economic Forum, the stablecoin market moved more than $27 trillion in 2024, exceeding the combined annual volume of Visa and Mastercard. In Latin America, it indicates that Argentina and Brazil lead the use of stablecoins with shares of 61.8% and 59.8% respectively, well above the global average (44.7%).
Supply of tokenized assets increases
This move seeks to fully insert itself into real world assets (RWA) or, in Spanish, real world assets. They are transforming global finance by bringing traditional assets (such as bonds, stocks or fiat currencies) to the digital environment through tokenization, facilitating their access.
In this line, In addition to wARS, Ripio recently launched wAL30rdthe tokenized version of the Argentine sovereign bond AL30, with a parity of 1:1. Since it is a crypto asset, it can be traded 24/7, unlike the traditional asset.
The initial “w” of wARS and wAL30rd refer to “wrapped,” a digital representation brand that Ripio adopted from the Ethereum universe to categorize its ecosystem of tokenized assets from now on.