Why is a car not worth the same in Mexico as in Argentina if I pay with cryptocurrency

In countries like Mexico, the adoption of bitcoin as a means of payment was still progressing slowly in commercial establishments. According to El País of Spain, in October there were barely a hundred businesses that allowed it. Reuters Photo/Toya Sarno Jordan/Illustration

The implementation of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment is normalizing throughout the world at a moderate but firm pace. Now it is possible to purchase almost any product or service with these digital currencies. From a coffee, a plane ticket or a hotel room, to cars, apartments or the exchange of professional services. The list is long, although this mechanism is still far from replacing traditional methods such as cash, credit cards or, more recently, electronic bank transfers.

It is a fact that transactions with these assets have been growing at a dizzying pace in the world. The American consulting firm Chainalysis reported that the growth of this variable from 2020 to 2021 was 881% and that adoption, that is, people who say they use or own it, has increased by up to 2,300% since 2019.

Today it is more common to see signs or advertisements that warn that bitcoin, ethereum, binance coin, tether, cardano, among thousands of other cryptoactives that exist in the market are welcome, and this has made it possible to establish a global market in which any person with a digital currency of this type can acquire a good, product or service in another country.

This circumstance forces an analysis regarding the impact that this may have on the prices of said goods, products or services, and whether the penetration and adoption of cryptocurrencies will generate a global market with standardized costs regardless of geography.

The variables that mark the prices

Maximiliano Hinz, director of Binance Latin America, responded to Yahoo Finance that cryptocurrencies are linked to stable currencies such as dollars, and explained how Binance Pay, its cryptocurrency payment technology, operates.

“Today we continue to use the price of dollars as a reference, so payments in crypto continue to be based on the price of the North American currency. That is, if someone is going to buy an apartment that is listed at $100,000, the value that fluctuates is the price in bitcoin (BTC). Some days it will be 2.2 BTC, other 2 and in the future it could be 0.5”, says Hinz.

In his concept, it is expected that this will not change much and bitcoin should be analyzed, as it is the main reference for crypto assets in the world, as if it were digital gold.

“Nobody sells a car or an apartment in a certain number of grams of gold, but puts a value in a fiat currency. The future will tell if the world accepts a cryptocurrency as the currency of the world and we stop depending on the dollar standard”, add.

Hinz sees it difficult to standardize prices and that, for example, items such as a car, which is the same in Mexico or Argentina, are worth the same in crypto assets, even though this payment method is increasingly global.

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Virtually all cryptocurrencies on the market are referenced to the dollar.  Photo: Getty Images.

Virtually all cryptocurrencies on the market are referenced to the dollar. Photo: Getty Images.

“It is difficult to think about this, since today, if we take the countries that use the same currency, this premise is not fulfilled. Within the European Community we have very high price variations in the same products. Prices are not only given by the cost of the item, but also taxes, rental costs, salaries, etc. All this forms the price matrix. In countries like Spain we might find certain things cheaper than in Germany. The same would happen if the world accepts Bitcoin as a single course currency,” he argues.

International cryptocurrency transactions

For Ricardo Armenta, Commercial and Marketing Director of Bitpoint, a cryptocurrency exchange of Japanese origin with a presence in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil, the adoption of these assets as a means of payment still it is very organic and advances in very early stages.

However, he says that more and more companies are choosing to make their international transactions of purchases of inputs in cryptocurrencies because it is cheaper than with other conventional currencies, such as the dollar, since they avoid going through the Swift system used by the banking sector to validate financial operations between countries, reducing commissions and other associated costs.

Armenta agrees with Hinz that it will be hard to believe that in the future crypto assets will be able to standardize prices in some goods, products and servicesand to think that some cost the same regardless of the country, since the conditions of each market are unique and in the case of some products the associated costs that they have in their elaboration or manufacturing process cannot be dissociated.

An analysis in which only the future will have the last word.

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