Bitso’s latest Crypto Landscape in Latin America 2025 report offers a clear snapshot of how digital asset use is evolving across the region. Based on data from nearly 10 million customers in major markets including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the report found that almost 40% of all crypto purchases in 2025 were tied to dollar-linked assets such as USDT and USDC. The figures suggest that for many users in Latin America, crypto is increasingly serving practical financial needs rather than purely speculative ones.
Stablecoins Take the Lead in New Purchases
One of the report’s most notable findings is that USDC represented 23% of all purchases, surpassing Bitcoin at 18% and USDT at 16%. Bitso interprets this as evidence that users are placing greater emphasis on financial stability and liquidity over short-term trading strategies. In a region where local currencies can be volatile and access to reliable dollar exposure may be limited, stablecoins appear to be filling an increasingly important gap.
The pattern is visible across all the surveyed countries, although the degree varies by market. Argentina stands out as the clearest example of dollar-linked demand, with USDC and USDT together accounting for more than 70% of all cryptocurrency purchases. That level of concentration highlights how strongly local users are gravitating toward instruments that can preserve value in dollar terms. At the other end of the spectrum, Brazil appears to be the most balanced market in the report: stablecoins accounted for 34% of purchases, while Bitcoin led with 22%. Colombia and Mexico fell somewhere in between these two profiles.
A Structural Shift in Crypto Usage
Bitso describes the trend as a structural shift in how crypto is being used in Latin America. According to the report, digital assets are being used less as speculative instruments and more as a form of financial infrastructure for savings, payments, and cross-border value transfer. That is an important distinction. In this reading, stablecoin adoption in the region is not driven primarily by ideological interest in decentralization or by enthusiasm for technical innovation. Instead, it is being driven by a more immediate and practical need: access to a relatively stable currency through channels that users perceive as more reliable or accessible than traditional financial systems.
This helps explain why stablecoins have become especially relevant in markets facing inflation, capital friction, or currency instability. Dollar-pegged tokens offer a way to move and store value with speed and flexibility, while also maintaining a clearer relationship to the U.S. dollar. In that context, stablecoins are increasingly functioning as tools for everyday economic survival and efficiency, whether for remittances, preserving purchasing power, or facilitating business payments.
Bitcoin Remains the Core Store-of-Value Asset
Even with stablecoins taking a larger share of purchases, Bitcoin remains the anchor asset in Latin American crypto portfolios. The report says that BTC represents 52% of all holdings across the region. That figure was down by only 1% year over year, indicating that Bitcoin’s role has stayed broadly intact despite the rise of stablecoin use. In practical terms, the data points to a market structure in which users may increasingly buy stablecoins for transactional and defensive reasons, while continuing to hold Bitcoin as a longer-term reserve asset.
This split between purchase behavior and portfolio composition is one of the report’s most meaningful insights. It suggests that Latin American users are not necessarily abandoning Bitcoin in favor of stablecoins. Rather, they are assigning different functions to different assets. Stablecoins are becoming more useful for payments, liquidity management, and access to dollar exposure, while Bitcoin continues to serve as a store of value within the broader crypto allocation.
What the Data Says About the Region
Viewed together, the numbers outline an increasingly mature crypto market in Latin America. The region’s users appear to be moving toward a more functional asset allocation model shaped by real-world economic pressures. Stablecoins are being used as practical financial rails, while Bitcoin remains the dominant long-term holding. That balance reflects a market responding to local realities rather than following a single global crypto narrative.
Bitso’s findings also underscore that adoption in Latin America cannot be understood solely through the lens of speculation. The region’s crypto economy is being shaped by inflation risks, cross-border payment needs, and uneven access to dependable financial services. Against that backdrop, the report suggests a clearer division of labor inside crypto portfolios: stablecoins for movement and stability, Bitcoin for retention and value preservation.
As a result, Latin America’s digital asset landscape may be entering a phase where utility matters as much as investment upside. If the trend continues, stablecoins are likely to remain central to daily crypto usage in the region, while Bitcoin retains its role as the flagship asset people choose to keep over time.