New all-time high trading volumes on LocalBitcoins were recorded in Venezuela and Argentina over this past week.
In Venezuela, almost 143 billion Bolivar Fuerte (VES) were traded, almost 20% more than the previous record of 120 billion at the beginning of September.
In Argentina, the figure of 19 million Pesos (ARS) was exceeded, an increase of more than 18% compared to the previous record of 16.4 million, recorded last week.
The trading volumes were significant also in Chile, with over 121,000 Pesos (CLP).
This means that South American countries with economic problems, such as Venezuela, financial problems, such as Argentina, or social problems, such as Chile, are among the world’s countries with the highest growth in bitcoin exchanges for local currency.
In reality, these volumes are still relatively low overall, ranging from 627 BTC in Venezuela to 31 BTC in Chile and 30 BTC in Argentina, but growth seems to be unstoppable. Moreover, given that the problems that are being solved by bitcoin do not seem to be going away soon, a further increase in volumes is likely to be expected in the coming weeks or months.
All this happened despite a strong overall drop in trading volumes on LocalBitcoins, due to the recent changes that introduced the mandatory verification of identity (KYC) on the platform.
In fact, a total of only 3,778 BTC were traded in the last week, compared to, for example, almost 15,000 at the beginning of February. In US dollars, the drop was from 67 million at the beginning of July to 35 million today.
This last figure only makes the records of Venezuela and Argentina even more significant and shows how bitcoin is able to attract a lot of interest in those countries where local currencies suffer greatly, or where there are strong restrictions on the movement of capital.
