The Chief Technology Officer of Tether and Bitfinex, Paolo Ardoino has said that Tether’s decision to launch a new digital asset pegged to Mexican Peso will be a beneficial decision for cryptocurrency adoption in the country.
In an interview with the media, Paolo stated that his reason for attending the World Economic Forum Summit held at Davos Switzerland with the theme “Working Together, restoring Trust” was to showcase the utility of cryptocurrencies.
He said “I didn’t participate in Davos to meet CEOs of big banks,” he said. “We are here to send our message [that] there is a big world out there that needs crypto in a safe way.”
Tether in an announcement made it known that it will launch a new peso-backed stablecoin on the Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRX) and Polygon (MATIC) networks owing to a growing demand for cryptocurrencies and stablecoin products in Mexico.
Paolo believes that the dollar-pegged stablecoin will be successful in onboarding the next 2 billion crypto users. However, to bridge more people to USDT, his company must work with local banks by offering “other flavors of Tether.”
Speaking on the adoption of bitcoin as a legal tender in Mexico, Paolo said he’s “bullish on the case that many countries will need, sooner rather than later, [to accept] Bitcoin.”
“However, the path to Bitcoin becoming legal tender in Mexico will be more complicated than in El Salvador because the former already has an official currency. So, while Bitcoin may not achieve the status of legal tender in the near term, it could become a “de facto legal tender” that is used alongside the peso”, he said.
During the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami in April, Mexican senator Indira Kempis mentioned that adopting the bitcoin as a legal tender in Mexico is “going to be an uphill battle”
“The powers at the central bank and ministry of finance hate Bitcoin because of the freedom it represents and it’s a direct threat to their monopoly money.”
