#490: Simon Chamorro on Crypto in the Developing World

— Simon Chamorro, co-founder and CEO of Valiu, fled Venezuela's hyperinflation and built a cross-border payment platform for Latin America using stablecoins and Bitcoin infrastructure.

— Valiu enables users to hold dollar-backed accounts and send remittances between countries (initially Colombia and Venezuela) at zero cost and instantly via a mobile app.

— Venezuela's currency lost 1,000% of its value in January 2021 alone; cash bills are now worthless and used for art or purses because the purses hold more value than the money.

— Valiu currently has 80,000 cumulative users, 30,000 monthly active users, and has moved $9 million from Colombia to Venezuela since launching in October 2019.

— The company uses stablecoins (previously Bitcoin futures) to back the Valiu dollar one-to-one and is building its own blockchain and token to make the system censorship-resistant and decentralized over time.

— Simon believes Venezuela could become the first crypto economy in the world within a decade if political power changes hands, and sees Latin America as most susceptible to replacing fiat with crypto due to endemic currency collapse and economic mismanagement.

— Bitcoin and stablecoins are already solving real financial crises in emerging markets; demand in hyperinflationary economies like Venezuela is genuinely high and organic, not speculative.

— Crypto adoption in Latin America will likely happen region-by-region with different service providers handling local on/off-ramps due to regulatory fragmentation, rather than one global winner-takes-all platform.

— Monitor on-ramp volumes and crypto-under-management (not fiat-to-fiat cash-out) as leading indicators of whether crypto is genuinely replacing fiat in emerging markets.