Bitfinex, a digital asset trading platform, has announced a new investment in the leading Chilean crypto firm Orionx, as both companies look “to ramp up efforts to promote financial freedom and inclusion throughout Latin America.”
Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex, said:
“We’re excited to collaborate with Orionx as we look to expand our presence in Chile and across Latin America. This represents a major step forward in our efforts to harness the power of Bitcoin and decentralized technology to promote financial freedom and empower businesses that share our values. We look forward to working even more closely with the team at Orionx to support its growth and development going forward.”
Founded in 2017, Orionx has emerged “as one of Latin America’s most promising crypto industry success stories, evolving beyond its origins as a crypto exchange to become the region’s first crypto bank offering users an expansive range of crypto-related services.”
The company now has its sights set “on expansion beyond Chile as it prepares to launch in Peru, Colombia and Mexico, aiming to surpass one million users by 2024.”
Brought together by a shared commitment to decentralized technology, financial freedom and delivering a viable alternative to the traditional banking system, the collaboration is expected to “deliver significant benefits to both Bitfinex and Orionx.”
For its part, Bitfinex will “gain yet another significant foothold in Latin America, indirectly reaching millions of users, and support common education programs for local universities, as it builds on recent work to promote financial freedom and inclusion in countries such as El Salvador and Paraguay.”
OrionX will meanwhile “benefit from Bitfinex’s strong crypto trading expertise and network, and also its product features across crypto trading, staking and lending, and its ongoing development of new innovative and accessible crypto services.”
Joel Vainstein, cofounder of Orionx, said:
“Having a strategic collaboration with a company like Bitfinex will play a vital role in advancing our project in LATAM. We firmly believe that their involvement will provide a substantial impetus to our capital raising activities. We are confident that their extensive experience and proven product portfolio will expedite our own product development and user base expansion, positioning us as the benchmark in the region.”
According to a report by blockchain intelligence company Chainalysis, Latin America is today “one of the world’s fastest growing crypto markets, expanding 40% year-on-year to rank No.7 in 2022 with estimated crypto inflows of $562 billion.”
Bitfinex’s support of OrionX is the latest in “a series of moves aimed at increasing the company’s presence in Latin America and other emerging markets where there is a heightened, unmet need for financial services.”
Over the past two years in particular, Bitfinex has “played an increasingly active role in El Salvador, the world’s first country to officially adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, working closely alongside partners such as Mi Primer Bitcoin to promote financial education and support the growth of local businesses.”
In November last year, Bitfinex chose El Salvador “for the launch of its Bitfinex Freedom Manifesto, a cypherpunk-inspired declaration underlining the company’s commitment to leveraging tech innovation to further individual freedom.”
In April 2023, Bitfinex Securities El Salvador, “a fully-regulated platform for issuing and trading tokenised assets, was meanwhile granted El Salvador’s first Digital Asset Service Provider licence under the country’s ground-breaking new Digital Assets Law.”
Elsewhere in Latin America, this month, Bitfinex has “turned its attention to neighbouring Paraguay, sponsoring a three-week bootcamp run by local NGO Penguin Academy aimed at teaching women essential coding skills.”