A Perspective on the Latin American Stablecoin Market: Utility is King, with Brazil and Mexico Leading the Localization Ecosystem

Author: Filippo Armani

Compiled by: Tim, PANews

PANews Editor's Note: This article is excerpted from the third part of "The Money Layer: LATAM Crypto 2025 Report", which focuses on the current development status of local stablecoins in Latin America. The following is the translated content.

Stablecoins have become the backbone of on-chain economic development in Latin America. Dollar-pegged stablecoins and local currency stablecoins have replaced volatile assets, becoming the core of crypto applications, and continue to maintain several times the growth momentum.

Key Points:

• In July 2025, USDT and USDC accounted for over 90% of the total transfer volume across all exchanges, a significant increase from about 60% in 2022.
• Brazil is leading in both the number of active local stablecoins and overall trading volume. As of July 2025, the trading volume of the Brazilian Real stablecoin has reached 906 million dollars, almost matching the total for the entire year of 2024 at 910 million dollars, with an annual trading volume expected to reach about 1.5 billion dollars based on the current growth rate.
• The Mexican Peso Pegged Stablecoin (MXNB + MXNe) is expected to reach a total market value of approximately $34 million by July 2025, achieving about a 638-fold annual growth compared to 1 million pesos (approximately $53,000) in July 2024.
• Local stablecoins on the leading blockchain: Polygon (BRLA, BRZ), Celo (cREAL), Base (MXNe), and Arbitrum (MXNB)

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Stablecoins have become the financial cornerstone of cryptocurrency adoption in Latin America, with applications that extend far beyond speculation. Throughout the Latin American region, stablecoins serve as savings tools, payment channels, cross-border remittance pathways, and inflation hedging instruments, making them the most practical and widely used form of cryptocurrency. Currently, the application of stablecoins in real-world scenarios in Latin America is leading globally: according to the "2025 Stablecoin Status Report" published by Fireblocks, 71% of respondents use stablecoins for cross-border payments, and 100% of businesses have either launched, are testing, or are preparing stablecoin strategies. Equally important, 92% of the responding institutions stated that their wallet and API infrastructure support stablecoin operations, which confirms market demand and highlights technological maturity. For millions of people in Latin America, stablecoins have become a digital equivalent to the US dollar, serving not only as an accessible inflation hedging tool but also as an effective means to bypass capital controls. In many cases, this is even the only viable channel for individuals to hold dollar-denominated assets.

In countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, stablecoins have surpassed Bitcoin to become the preferred cryptocurrency for everyday use, mainly due to their price stability and direct peg to the value of the dollar ("2025 Stablecoin Status Report", Fireblocks). USDC and USDT account for over 90% of the transfer volume on exchanges. Taking Argentina as an example, 72% of the crypto asset purchases on the Bitso platform in 2024 came from these two stablecoins, while Bitcoin only accounted for 8% (Bitso 2024 data). Colombia shows a similar pattern, with stablecoin purchases accounting for 48% due to restrictions on dollar bank accounts and ongoing currency fluctuations. Brazil's shift is even more pronounced, with stablecoin trading volume on local exchanges growing by 207.7% year-on-year, significantly outpacing other crypto assets (Chainalysis October 2024). In addition to transfers, 39% of crypto asset purchases in Latin America in 2024 involved stablecoins, a significant increase from 30% the previous year (Bitso 2024).

Current Status of Local Stablecoin Development

Despite the fact that in Latin America, dollar-pegged assets remain the mainstream application of stablecoins (mainly used for hedging against inflation), in the past two years, stablecoins pegged to local currencies have been experiencing explosive growth. These tokens pegged to local fiat currencies such as the Brazilian Real and Mexican Peso are increasingly being used in domestic payments, on-chain business activities, and local financial system integration. By eliminating the cumbersome exchange process between the dollar and local currencies, these stablecoins not only reduce costs for merchants and users but also accelerate local trade settlements. For businesses, they can connect directly to payment systems like Brazil's PIX, enabling instant transfers without the need for bank involvement, while also meeting tax compliance requirements. In high-inflation economies, these stablecoins serve as a "bridge asset," allowing users to transact using a stable local currency unit and, when necessary, convert to dollars or other value storage means for risk hedging.

Brazil provides the clearest case study for this trend, with stablecoins pegged to the Brazilian real showing astonishing year-on-year growth. The transaction volume skyrocketed from just over 5,000 in 2021 to more than 1.4 million in 2024, and has remained at a high level of 1.2 million so far in 2025, increasing by more than 230 times compared to four years ago. The number of independent senders has also grown exponentially: soaring from fewer than 800 in 2021 to over 90,000 in 2025, with an increase of 11 times just since 2023. The on-chain native transfer volume leapt from about 110 million reais (approximately 2.09 million USD at the time of writing) in 2021 to nearly 5 billion reais (approximately 900 million USD) by July 2025, almost matching the total volume for the entire year of 2024. If the data from August to date is included, the total transfer volume for 2025 has already surpassed the total for 2024. This innovation, which began as a marginalized experiment, has rapidly grown into the core pillar of Brazil's on-chain economy in just a few years, achieving explosive growth across transaction scale, user base, and transferred value.

As of June 2025, five different stablecoins pegged to the Brazilian Real are actively circulating, reducing market concentration and marking the maturity of the ecosystem. Among them: BRZ issued by fintech company Transfero provides blockchain infrastructure solutions for banks and payment institutions in the Latin America region; cREAL issued by the Celo public blockchain focuses on mobile-first DeFi integration solutions; BRLA developed by BRLA Digital and Avenia focuses on compliant fiat-to-crypto bridging services; BRL1, supported by exchanges such as Mercado Bitcoin, Bitso, and Foxbit, aims to establish industry-wide standards; while BBRL from the Braza group is positioned to serve regional trade and payment scenarios.

Despite the growth in market size, the Brazilian Real stablecoin is still in the early stages of development, with a circulation of approximately 23 million USD.

According to an analysis by Iporanga Ventures in its latest release of the "Brazilian Real Stablecoin Report", the landscape in this sector is rapidly evolving. Although there is currently no clear market leader, an in-depth analysis of project-level data reveals specific areas of leading advantages.

Among them, the BRLA stablecoin ranks first in the "unique remittance users" metric, indicating that it has the widest retail user coverage.

cREAL dominates in the amount of transfers, reflecting its early appeal in the retail and small payment sectors.

In terms of native transfer volume, BRZ held an absolute leading position until mid-2024, but this situation was suddenly disrupted in the second half of the year by the rapidly emerging cREAL. As we entered early 2025, with the steady growth of BRLA, Celo's advantage in transfer volume gradually diminished. Then in July 2025, BBRL made a strong entry with a shocking presence. Although its number of active sending addresses was relatively limited, the explosive growth triggered by its launch on XRPL (XRP Ledger) caused its monthly native transfer volume share to soar to about 65%.

Unlike the US dollar stablecoins which focus on issuance and transfer transactions on the Ethereum mainnet, the trading activity of the real stablecoin is mainly concentrated on Layer 2 networks and other public chains. Polygon has become the dominant channel with its native transaction volume and active user base: in July 2025, it recorded approximately 74,000 transactions (involving 14,000 unique users), with a monthly trading volume reaching a historic record of 500 million reais (approximately 50 million USD).

Celo ranks second and holds a historical high transfer record of 213,000 transactions, which peaked in December 2024, driven by the rapid development of cREAL in early retail scenarios and small payment fields. Although the number of unique payers decreased in 2025, the scaled repeat payment flows formed through merchants, aggregators, and funding pools still kept Celo's transaction volume at a quite considerable level.

As an impressive emerging player, XRPL experienced explosive growth after the launch of the Brazilian Real stablecoin (BBRL) in July 2025: the number of transfers surged from over a hundred in May to about 3,000 in July, while the native transaction volume skyrocketed to approximately 1.16 billion Brazilian Reais, marking the formation of a new high-value channel.

The Base chain shows a stable growth trend in 2025, peaking in June; while the BNB chain has seen a significant decline in transaction volume and active addresses since 2022, leading to a continuous shrinkage in market share. The Ethereum mainnet only intermittently handles large, low-frequency transactions, having limited functionality. However, the BRZ token briefly dominated network transaction activity from late 2023 to early 2024.

In addition to the original data, the report by Iporanga Ventures reveals the practical scenarios and high-value driving features of stablecoins in Brazil: B2B payments lead the market, with companies paying overseas suppliers or employees using stablecoins, and then completing local settlements through the domestic PIX system; in the scenario of cross-border capital inflows, USD is converted to Brazilian real stablecoins for domestic payments. These stablecoins are becoming key infrastructure for the tokenized asset ecosystem in Brazil, enabling on-chain settlements without bank custody. In the gig economy and the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, stablecoins support payroll payments, risk hedging, and capital protection functions, with merchant integration solutions like CloudWalk's BRLC and Mercado Pago's USD stablecoin promoting mainstream market adoption.

Brazil has the most diverse and mature fiat-backed stablecoin ecosystem, while the Mexican peso stablecoin market is shaping around two main projects: Juno, Bitso's MXNB, and Brale's MXNe, with distinctly different development trajectories. The circulation model of MXNB has evolved from sporadic peaks of large-scale issuance by the end of 2024 to a more stable and widespread circulation pattern since 2025.

The growth of MXNB in 2025 marks a significant shift towards everyday use cases. In July 2025, the platform completed 179 transfers involving 70 independent senders, a staggering increase of 339% and 290% compared to the 46 transfers and 21 senders in the same period last year.

Although the trading volume peaked in January 2025, achieving 14.5 million Mexican pesos (approximately 750,000 USD at the exchange rate at the time of writing) with relatively few trades, in July of the same year, the trading volume was only 480,000 Mexican pesos (approximately 25,000 USD), but it came from a larger number of small payments. The average transaction amount has decreased from approximately 28,700 Mexican pesos in July 2024 to 3,600 Mexican pesos. This shift is accompanied by a clear migration direction: towards Arbitrum. In 2024, about 99% of transfers occurred on Ethereum; however, since the second quarter of 2025, about 94% of transfers have shifted to Arbitrum, making the low-fee layer 2 solution the default choice.

MXNe is issued by Brale, but it goes against the trend. By exclusively operating on the Base chain, it has developed into the largest trading volume Mexican peso-pegged stablecoin.

The above activities peaked in March 2025, with a total of 3,367 transfers made by 274 senders that month; although the frequency of subsequent transactions slowed down, the total transfer amount continued to rise. In July 2025, 2,148 transfers from 158 senders created a historical high of approximately 637.7 million Mexican pesos. This increased the average transaction size to nearly 297,000 pesos, indicating the potential for large transactions and institutional operations.

The contrast is very clear: MXNB now dominates the small retail payment scene, while MXNe focuses on large settlements. Compared to the more fragmented ecological structure of the Brazilian real, the Mexican market is still concentrated around these two issuers and a few settlement channels, but this has not hindered liquidity growth. Since mid-2025, the DEX trading volume of the Mexican peso currency pair has rapidly climbed to the top, marking an increasingly mature market structure.

DEX liquidity and trading model

The application of stablecoins pegged to the Brazilian Real and the Mexican Peso in the Latin American region is transcending payment categories by forming an on-chain foreign exchange channel between local currencies and global stablecoins, establishing substantial liquidity support on DEX.

In the BRL-related assets, cREAL is the core trading hub. Its largest trading pair, CELO–cREAL, has accumulated a trading volume of approximately $126 million, supported by the deep liquidity provided by the native DEX ecosystem of Celo. cREAL is also anchored to the mainstream cross-stablecoin market: cREAL–USDT ($87.7 million), cREAL–cUSD ($59.1 million), as well as non-USD trading pairs like cEUR–cREAL ($48.6 million) and cKES–cREAL ($24.9 million), fully reflecting cREAL's dual function as both a gateway for the Brazilian real fiat currency and a base currency for multi-currency swaps. However, since reaching a peak monthly trading volume of $80 million in November 2024 (accounting for 85% of the total stablecoin trading volume that month), cREAL's monthly DEX trading volume has continued to decline, dropping to $5 million by July 2025, reverting to the level of July 2024.

BRLA has now become a major USD channel, with BRLA-USDC ($97.5 million) and BRLA-USDT ($21.3 million) leading in trading volume. Since March 2025, BRLA-USDC has consistently been the highest trading volume USD-denominated DEX trading pair in this dataset, apart from stablecoins (only in May 2025 did the MXNB trading pair briefly surpass it). Although BRLA has never reached the historical peak trading volume of cREAL, the total trading volume for the BRLA trading pair reached $9 million in July 2025, nearly double the trading volume of cREAL in the same period, and a twofold increase compared to its own trading volume in July 2024.

BRZ remains stable and highly integrated, with liquidity mainly distributed among three trading pairs: BRZ-USDC (15.1 million USD), BRZ-USDT (14.7 million USD), and BRZ-BUSD (approximately 9.1 million USD). Among Brazilian real stablecoins, BRZ has the most extensive range of trading pairs. Although its trading volume is still lower than cREAL and BRLA, it has achieved continuous growth, rising from 26,000 USD in July 2024 to 3 million USD in July 2025, with a peak of 4.77 million USD in April of the same year.

In May 2025, during a period of large transactions and liquidity influx, the maximum trading pairs of the Mexican peso-pegged stablecoin MXNB, MXNB-WAVAX (29.7 million USD) and MXNB-USDC (18.6 million USD), saw a surge in trading volume. Since then, the Mexican peso trading pairs have continued to maintain strong momentum, with three MXN trading pairs still ranking among the top ten in local stablecoin DEX trading volume, indicating that this surge is not a temporary phenomenon.

MXNe only runs on Base, with its liquidity concentrated in the MXNe-USDC trading pair (worth about $18.3 million). Its trading volume on DEX has steadily increased from $1.13 million in March 2025 to $6.6 million in July, which aligns with Base's strategy to integrate local stablecoins into dollar liquidity pools. Interestingly, while MXNe leads in on-chain transfer volume, MXNB has a higher DEX trading volume. This indicates that MXNe mainly plays the role of high-value transfers and integration into the dollar ecosystem, while MXNB focuses on active trading on-chain.

The DEX trading volume of BRL1 and BBRL remains low, and cross-currency stablecoin trading activity is also quite small, with only three trading pairs showing significant activity, among which the BRLA–BRZ pair had the highest trading volume, peaking at approximately $400,000 in April 2025.

The trading volume of stablecoins is highly concentrated on a few platforms, each of which is tied to a specific local stablecoin ecosystem. Uniswap remains the liquidity leader with a total trading volume of $426 million, holding a core position in the stablecoin market pegged to the Brazilian Real and Mexican Peso on Ethereum and Layer 2. Native chain DEXs maintain absolute advantages in their respective stablecoin domains: Trader Joe ($52.8 million) and PancakeSwap ($13.3 million) dominate the liquidity of BRZ on the Avax and BNB chains, while Mento ($50.8 million) is the dedicated trading platform for cREAL on the Celo chain. The 1inch limit order protocol employs a different operational mechanism, positioning itself more as an aggregated settlement layer rather than a liquidity provider, mainly reflected in processing large one-time swap transactions instead of maintaining deep liquidity pools.

One of the most significant developments in 2025 is the rise of Aerodrome. The platform's accumulated trading volume has reached $25.8 million, with nearly all of its trading volume coming from the MXNe-USDC trading since the second quarter. As a core infrastructure for native stablecoins on Base, Aerodrome's role on the Base chain is similar to that of Mento in the Celo ecosystem. Smaller but noteworthy trading venues, such as Carbon DeFi ($4.8 million), Pharaoh ($1.95 million), and Balancer (approximately $1.8 million), cater to decentralized or niche cross-asset pools. Overall, the liquidity of on-chain native stablecoins continues to grow in absolute terms and is increasingly deeply tied to on-chain DEX infrastructure. The rapid rise of Aerodrome is arguably the clearest example of this trend in 2025.

The liquidity model of stablecoins remains tightly bound to their native chains and the depth of mainstream DEXs. Celo ranks first with a total trading volume of $363 million, where the trading pairs cREAL-cUSD and USDC on the Mento platform dominate, leading the dollar-denominated trading volume from July 2024 to February 2025. Polygon comes in second with $136 million, providing diversified Brazilian real stablecoin liquidity (especially focused on BRLA and BRZ) through Uniswap and QuickSwap, highlighting its dual function in stablecoin transfers and the DeFi and payment ecosystems. Avalanche ranks third with about $54.8 million, mainly driven by a surge in MXNB-WAVAX trading on Trader Joe in May 2025, while Uniswap, Pharaoh, and the 1inch limit order protocol further supplement liquidity in the Brazilian real and Mexican peso markets. Base follows closely with about $26.2 million, with its liquidity almost entirely sourced from the MXNe-USDC trading on the Aerodrome platform, reflecting a synchronized growth with Base's strategy to ramp up local stablecoins in 2025.

The core points are very clear: local stablecoins have ecological anchoring properties for liquidity in DEXs, and each mainstream public chain pairs its mainnet assets with a few dominant trading venues. The two explosive growth cases in 2025: Trader Joe operating MXNB on the Avalanche chain and Aerodrome operating MXNe on Base vividly demonstrate how the strategic importance of local stablecoins can mutually promote and strengthen the on-chain application ecosystem and the dominant position of exchanges.

Apart from Brazil and Mexico, several other countries in Latin America have also attempted to introduce local stablecoins, but most are still in early development stages or limited pilot projects. In Argentina, extreme currency volatility has hindered sustained attention on peso-pegged tokens such as Transfero's ARZ and Num Finance's nARS. Colombia has launched multiple stablecoin projects, including nCOP (Num Finance), cCOP (Celo/Mento), COPM (Minteo), and COPW (Bancolombia), targeting remittances and domestic payments, but adoption rates remain low. Chile's CLPD (on-chain peso) on Base, as well as Peru's nPEN (Num Finance) and sPEN (Anclap developed on the Staller chain), are similarly confined to niche areas, with usage scenarios primarily focused on pilot projects and specific payment channels. Although these projects reflect the growing interest in the region, their trading volumes remain limited, highlighting the crucial role of local conditions, particularly currency stability and regulatory clarity, in driving adoption.