Latin America Will Dominate 2025’s Crypto Events Scene #CriptoNews

Move over Token2049, Consensus, EthCC et al. For the first time ever, the world’s most meaningful and impactful crypto events this year will take place in Latin America.

From major conferences and developer-focused community gatherings, to month-long immersive “Pop-Up Cities”, the trench warfare needed to propel crypto forward in 2025 will take place in Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere in this heretofore overlooked part of the world.

Right now, delivering real-world solutions for real users is paramount as the crypto community tries to clean up the damage wrought by the memecoin casino era. Latin America, with its high levels of stablecoin adoption, solid talent base and crypto-friendly macro conditions has proven to be ground zero for these solutions.

Latam is the beta test

But it’s not as if crypto wasn’t already being used extensively in this part of the world. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico rank in the top 15 countries globally for crypto usage according to Chainalysis’ 2014 Global Crypto Adoption Index – which is widely considered the gold standard for such assessments.

But the region just hasn’t occupied much mindshare among crypto’s class of globetrotting elites vis-a-vis other regions like Asia, Europe and North America, where the need for crypto solutions is less immediate but there is more disposable income available to invest.

But things are quickly changing. This shift was made manifest on March 5 when the Ethereum Foundation announced that it would be hosting its Devconnect developer gathering in Buenos Aires on November 17-22.

The event, which occurs every other year, isn’t a typical conference but is rather meant to be a decentralized, community-driven collection of independent events that attracts developers, builders and investors from far beyond just the Ethereum world.

The rise of Pop Up Cities

But Devconnect, which draws upwards of 10,000 total official and unofficial attendees, is just one of a flurry of other community-bootstrapped events in the region.

This is particularly true in Argentina where controversial president Javier Milei’s libertarian ethos has ignited a wave of experimentation and innovation. Even his ill-advised decision to promote a dodgy memecoin project has, if nothing else, attracted even more global attention to Argentina’s crypto scene.

Carrying the torch is the Aleph Crecimiento movement, which is back for the third edition of its Pop-Up City in Buenos Aires during the month of March. The first edition kicked off in August 2024 and featured a four-week sprint to hack crypto-native solutions to the financial and economic woes that have plagued the country for 70 years.

The second edition was a shorter, summer edition that took place in December before the holiday season kicked in. It featured the presence of Vitalik Buterin and other marquee names

This third edition is all about seizing the moment and maintaining momentum, Santi Cristobal of the Crecimiento core team explained – emphasizing that Argentina presents a unique window of opportunity to deploy crypto primitives and concepts to a population base that understands the value that these products provide, and with a government that is open to new ideas.

The itinerary for the month includes programming on regulation, interoperability and artificial intelligence, interspersed with hackathons and wellness and recreational events designed to build community in a way that a typical conference or hackathon cannot.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In late March, the Merge Buenos Aires conference will take place with an eye toward specifically bridging the crypto communities in Latin America and the rest of the world.

This two day conference will have more of an institutional flair. It will feature conversations with regulators, banks and fintechs while trying to connect service and infrastructure providers with builders and communities in the local ecosystem, CEO Paula Pascual explained.

Don’t forget about Brazil

Not to be left out, Brazil will be getting its first month-long pop-up city in April-March in Florianopolis – often referred to as Brazil’s “Silicon Island” due to its high density of startups and tech companies.

Ipê City, as the initiative is called, aims to be a physical manifestation of the “Network State” concept pioneered by Balaji Srinivasan and others.

Jean Hansen, of the Ipê core team explained that the goal of the project is to bring together builders and “techno-optimists” to forge new solutions across the verticals of education, governance, health and finance. He previously helped organize the Vitalia pop-up city on the Honduran island of Prospera.

Hansen contends that the pop-up city concept brings the potential to fulfill the promise that new technologies like crypto offer to the region:

“The real promise and the real interesting part of crypto, at least for me, is this, that it provides this new way of trying to organize and coordinate human behavior – social structures and governance and things of this nature.”