Bitso data shows stablecoins led Latin America crypto purchases in 2025
USD-linked tokens made up 40% of buys versus 18% for Bitcoin, even as BTC stayed in 52% of portfolios.
Bitso’s 2025 Latin America adoption dataset shows US dollar-linked stablecoins became the region’s top crypto purchase for the first time, taking 40% share versus 18% for Bitcoin. The same data shows Bitcoin still dominates long-term positioning, appearing in 52% of portfolios across the region.
Key Takeaways
- USD-linked stablecoins represented 40% of crypto purchases in Latin America in 2025, overtaking Bitcoin’s 18% share for the first time in Bitso’s dataset.
- The purchase-mix shift is drawn from activity across nearly 10 million Bitso retail users on the exchange.
- Bitcoin remained the most common long-term holding, showing up in 52% of regional portfolios in 2025 versus 53% a year earlier.
- The global stablecoin market was cited at roughly $320 billion, underscoring how quickly USD tokens have scaled beyond trading pairs.
LatAm’s Purchase Mix Flips: Stablecoins Lead, Bitcoin Trails
Bitso’s 2025 Latin America crypto adoption report shows a clean behavioral pivot: users are buying US dollar-linked stablecoins more than Bitcoin. Stablecoins accounted for 40% of crypto purchases in 2025, while Bitcoin represented 18%, marking the first time stablecoin purchases surpassed Bitcoin in the region.
For traders, the signal is less about a “risk-on” rotation and more about what LatAm demand is choosing as its default unit of account. When the on-ramp flow tilts toward USDT and USDC, it changes where liquidity naturally pools, what assets become the first hop in a trade, and which rails get used for payments and transfers.
What Bitso’s 10M-User Dataset Captures—and What It Doesn’t
The dataset is large enough to treat as a meaningful regional read. Bitso says the findings are based on nearly 10 million retail users across its exchange platform, which makes the 40% stablecoin purchase share hard to dismiss as noise.
It is still exchange-sample data, not a full-market census. The excerpt does not provide country-level splits, a definition of whether “purchases” means fiat-to-crypto only or also includes crypto-to-crypto conversions, or whether the figures are weighted by transaction count or volume. Those details matter when translating adoption narratives into flow expectations.
Bitcoin Still Dominates Portfolios Even as Buying Shifts to USD Tokens
The report’s most tradable takeaway is the split between what users buy now and what they keep. Even as stablecoins lead purchases, Bitcoin remains the dominant long-term position: it was held in 52% of crypto portfolios across the region in 2025, down only slightly from 53% the prior year.
Bitso frames Bitcoin as long-duration savings rather than day-to-day cash management, writing: “Bitcoin continues to function as Latin America’s primary long-term digital store of value,”. In practice, that reads like a barbell. Stablecoins handle transactional and defensive USD exposure, while BTC remains the higher-volatility, longer-horizon allocation.
The report also cites the global stablecoin market at roughly $320 billion, reinforcing that USD-linked tokens are expanding into a core crypto “cash” layer. The figure is presented without a timestamp in the excerpt, but the direction of travel aligns with stablecoins becoming the default settlement asset across venues.
Remittances and ‘Digital Dollarization’ Signals to Track Next
Bitso describes the stablecoin shift as “digital dollarization,” tying it to persistent inflation, currency depreciation, and limited access to traditional banking in parts of Latin America. The practical uses cited are preserving savings, making payments, and sending cross-border remittances.
One near-term adoption datapoint is Mercado Libre’s remittance push. In early April, the company launched a cross-border remittance product using the “Meli dollar” stablecoin for users in Brazil, Mexico, and Chile, following the discontinuation of its Mercado Coin stablecoin earlier in 2026.
The next confirmations traders should look for are mechanical: whether 2026 exchange data keeps stablecoins near or above the 40% purchase share, whether BTC’s portfolio penetration holds around 52%, and whether there are updated, timestamped global stablecoin market-size readings that validate or revise the roughly $320 billion figure.
Why This Looks Like USD-Exposure Demand, Not a ‘BTC Is Dead’ Story
The threshold that matters is whether stablecoins stay the dominant on-ramp while Bitcoin’s portfolio share remains sticky near the low-50% range. If that holds, the setup starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven: LatAm users are treating stablecoins as spendable dollars and BTC as a long-term reserve.
I don’t read the 18% BTC purchase share as a rejection of Bitcoin. I read it as a liquidity preference shift where the first buy is increasingly a USD proxy, especially when remittances and everyday payments are part of the use case. This development matters in practical terms if it keeps concentrating regional flow and settlement activity into USDT/USDC rails while BTC remains the region’s dominant held risk asset.
