The Central Bank of Argentina is preparing to let private banks offer cryptocurrency trading and custody services.
This marks one of the sharpest turns yet in how a high‑inflation economy treats digital assets. In a market where savers already live half in pesos and half in stablecoins, the move pushes crypto from the shadows of peer‑to‑peer chats into the fluorescent light of branch banking.
Central Bank Enables Parallel Money System
The new framework will give licensed private banks permission to open crypto desks for retail and institutional clients, using segregated business units and dedicated infrastructure instead of bolting trading onto traditional accounts. Banks will need to route orders through approved venues, run institutional‑grade custody with clear segregation of client assets, and meet strict capital, liquidity, and risk‑management thresholds similar to those applied to complex securities.
Only a narrow basket of assets is likely to pass the first filter: blue‑chip coins such as Bitcoin and major dollar‑pegged stablecoins, along with tokenized instruments that meet minimum standards on liquidity, transparency, and auditability. Clients will see explicit warnings that these positions do not enjoy deposit insurance, that they carry market and technology risk, and that banks can freeze or unwind exposure when required by regulation or court orders.
Industry Value
For policymakers, this is an attempt to drag an existing onchain economy into a perimeter they can actually see. Years of capital controls and chronic inflation pushed Argentines into stablecoins and offshore platforms long before the central bank showed any interest in digital assets. Moving trading and storage into regulated banks gives supervisors cleaner data on flows, sharper tools for tax enforcement, and better visibility into dollar‑linked pressure on the peso.
The shift also rewires incentives for local lenders. Facing erosion of their deposit base and competition from neobanks and informal markets, traditional banks gain a new fee line but inherit a thicket of operational risk. They must hire onchain risk teams, build or rent custody stacks, and answer for every hack, outage, or token meltdown that hits their clients’ screens.
If the rollout holds, corporate treasurers and funds will gain compliant rails for on‑balance‑sheet crypto exposure, hedging, and tokenized instruments, while retail users will trade through interfaces they already know instead of trusting anonymous OTC chats.
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