The Latin American Opportunity

Latin America presents a unique confluence of factors that make it the perfect testing ground for Bitcoin-backed yield products. The region combines extreme currency volatility with paradoxically high fixed-income yields, creating an arbitrage opportunity that has existed for decades but remained inaccessible to most market participants.

Brazil exemplifies this opportunity perfectly. While the Brazilian Real has depreciated over 80% against the dollar in the past decade, Brazilian government bonds consistently yield 10-14% annually, and private credit markets offer 20-30% returns. This yield differential exists because of country risk, currency risk, and accessibility barriers – precisely the factors that blockchain technology can address.

The demand side is equally compelling. Latin Americans have already embraced cryptocurrency at unprecedented rates, with Argentina receiving $91 billion in crypto inflows between July 2023 and June 2024, making it the regional leader. This adoption isn't driven by speculation but by necessity – when your currency loses 140% of its value annually as Argentina's peso did in 2023, any alternative becomes attractive.

What makes Cambi different from existing solutions is that we're not asking users to abandon their local context. Previous attempts at serving this market, like USD stablecoins, force users to think and transact in foreign currencies. Cambi allows users to maintain exposure to their local currency (through cBRL) while protecting their purchasing power through Bitcoin and/or USD collateralization alongside RWA yields.

The El Salvador Case

El Salvador’s Volcano Bonds are a pioneering financial instrument designed to raise $1 billion for Bitcoin City—a tax-free economic zone powered by geothermal energy to fund Bitcoin mining and purchases (generating yield).

Replicating Volcano Bonds’ concept across Latin America in a permissionless, open manner requires a decentralized approach that bypasses reliance on individual governments’ goodwill, which is often undermined by political volatility and regulatory inconsistency (e.g., Bolivia’s crypto ban, Argentina’s capital controls).

Cambi takes the core insight – Bitcoin as collateral for emerging market yields – and makes it permissionless, accessible, and immediately profitable. Instead of waiting for mining profits, we generate 20%+ yields from existing tokenized RWA. Instead of 5-year locks, our offer starts at 3-month terms. Instead of government dependency and $1000 minimum buys, we operate via smart contracts and arbitrary investment amounts. This transforms a one-country experiment into scalable infrastructure for all of Latin America.

RWAs are a reality

Brazil currently leads Latin America RWA market with almost $2B in tokenized assets (e.g., Liqi’s $500M plan, BLOCKBR’s $630M), currently ranking #6 in the world and already surpassing giants like Japan, Germany and the UAE. Banks like Itaú and Santander tokenize debt, and B3’s bonds use Hathor Network.

CVM’s (Brazil's SEC) regulatory approval alongside its combination of institutional adoption, regulatory support, and high-value tokenization projects makes it a standout market. More importantly for us, a significant portion of these assets are already publicly available on-chain, enabling novel protocols like Cambi to come into existence.

The tokenization protocols and bond platforms that we're partnered with deal with hundreds of millions of dollars per month combined by serving both the most established and highest growing markets in Brazil's economy: agriculture exports, e-commerce receivables, creator economy and marketing cycles.