Brazil's Largest E-Commerce Platform Mercado Libre Launches an Ethereum-Powered Coin

In Brazil, the dominant Latin American e-commerce platform Mercado Libre has launched Mercado Coin, its own cryptocurrency.

The company, which is sometimes referred to as the LATM region's answer to Amazon, has made a number of optimistic steps in relation to cryptocurrencies in recent months. The business started taking bitcoin (BTC) as payment last year. And in January of this year, the business made investments in Mercado Bitcoin and Paxos, two of the major cryptocurrency trading platforms in the area.

The company also runs Mercado Pago, a fintech division with wallet and exchange capabilities for cryptocurrencies. The company said this month that it would broaden the scope of its Bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and stablecoin trading functionalities.

And now the company has its own cryptocurrency: an Ethereum blockchain-based ECR20 token. At first glance, the company seems eager to treat Mercado Coin as a loyalty reward, but it actually aims to treat it as a full-fledged cryptoasset and offer it as a tradeable token on Mercado Pago. The company stated that "for now" it will not seek to list the coin on significant exchanges outside of its ecosystem, but that it might be able to do so in the future thanks to its agreements with Paxos and Mercado Bitcoin.

To create the coin, the company collaborated with Argentina's Ripio, another cryptocurrency exchange.

The coin will be initially valued at USD 0.10 but will be "subject to market fluctuation," according to Bloomberg Latin America and Reuters.

The corporation gave access to the cryptocurrency to 500,000 of its Brazilian customers yesterday, but by the end of the month, it expects all 80 million of those consumers to have full access.

The business was quoted as saying that it "still does not know" when it could try to bring Mercado Coin to other countries in Latin America.

According to Mercado Libre, the coin serves as a means of "rewarding users for their behavior" within its "environment," with higher spenders earning greater coin incentives.

The company's founder and CEO, Marcos Galperin, wrote on Twitter that Mercado Coin will "further boost" the "loyalty program" of the e-commerce platform and that the business was "taking another step to democratize financial inclusion in Latin America."