Argentine trade Ripio is leaning into native foreign money stablecoins and tokenized bonds as CEO Sebastián Serrano braces for what he expects to be a “lateralized” or down yr for crypto in 2026 — however a decade-long growth for stablecoins.
Based in 2013, Ripio has shifted from a pure retail trade right into a B2B infrastructure supplier serving banks, fintechs, and large platforms like Mercado Libre (Latin America’s reply to Amazon).
The trade now presents its personal greenback stablecoin, Criptodólar (UXD), and a brand new vary of native fiat-backed stablecoins, together with the Argentine peso‑pegged wARS, the Brazilian real-pegged wBRL, the Mexican peso-pegged wMXN and a tokenized model of Argentina’s most‑traded sovereign bond, AL30, which Serrano says traded “greater than 1,000,000 models” on the Sunday of the final Argentinian election in October, 2025.
“Probably the most liquid property [like sovereign debt] are going to be those that get tokenized first,” he informed Cointelegraph, including that tokenizing the greenback was solely step one to bringing extra of the actual economic system onchain, from horses to actual property.
Fixing stablecoin UX
Ripio’s native stablecoins are reside on the Ethereum mainnet, Base, and World Chain, with World App integrating most deeply to date, with roughly $200,000 in transaction quantity for wARS in its launch month, December 2025, and about $160,000 to date in January.
Serrano calls the preliminary traction “very promising,” however concedes that the objective for Ripio’s native foreign money stablecoins is “no less than $100 million in AUM by the top of the yr.”
This mannequin of pairing native stablecoins with digital native financial institution accounts is designed to repair what Serrano sees as a “crappy” consumer expertise (UX) in non‑custodial wallets that forces customers into clunky “purchase” flows and rapid international trade (FX) losses when changing into greenback stablecoins.
By enabling customers to transform native foreign money one‑to‑one into native stablecoins, Ripio goals to make step one so simple as doable, with out an upfront FX hit.
Associated: Stablecoins will stay ‘indispensable’ in Argentina below new president — Ripio CEO
Native stablecoins for native debt
Long run, Serrano sees native stablecoins as important for decentralized finance (DeFi) lending in international locations like Argentina and Brazil, the place it makes little sense for regionally salaried employees to borrow in US {dollars}.
Most DeFi protocols, he notes, “pressure you to borrow in USDC or USDT,” creating FX danger for debtors whose revenue is in pesos or reais, which might lose worth shortly.
Furthermore, “a lot of the economic system is denominated within the native foreign money,” he mentioned, arguing that borrowing ought to observe go well with and that native stablecoins are the lacking “constructing block” for that shift.
Associated: Revolut targets remittances and new banking license in Peru: Report
The last decade belongs to stablecoins
Ripio’s technique performs out in opposition to a turbulent home backdrop. Whereas Serrano credit President Javier Milei with doing “nice on the macro economic system,” he says his “tunnel imaginative and prescient” leaves little area for crypto regardless of the ideological overlap with libertarianism.
On Coinbase’s current resolution to pause peso fiat rails, he factors out that “monetary providers have a number of localization,” and that, as regulation advances, it could not have made “economical sense” to keep up native operations, given licensing and compliance prices.
Quite than go head‑to‑head with each retail app, from Binance on buying and selling to Lemon’s Bitcoin‑collateralized card, Serrano says Ripio leaned into B2B so it may very well be “the supplier” behind a number of platforms as a substitute of competing with all of them.
With stablecoins reportedly processing about $33 trillion onchain in 2025, he mentioned the stage belongs to them. “It’s going to be the last decade of stablecoins.”
