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uruguay has reportedly installed its first bitcoin (btc) atm, making it the 11th south american country to publicly encourage crypto adoption. Prior to Uruguay's involvement, South America was home to 79 ATM, representing 0.2% of the world's BTC ATM facilities.
according to ambito, uruguay’s first crypto atm was installed in the coastal city of punta del este, a major tourist attraction in the region. Uruguay's first bitcoin atm was developed and set up in partnership with two local crypto companies - urubit and inbierto.
the crypto atm in uruguay currently supports withdrawal and deposits of five cryptocurrencies, namely — btc, BINANCE coin (bnb), binance usd (busd), ferret token (frt) and urubit (urub). Frt and urub are internally cryptocurrencies handled and distributed by urubit and inbierto respectively.
Adolfo varela, the CEO of inbierto, confirmed that the initiative was entirely financed by the Government of Uruguay. Inbierto is a crypto investment platform, which is also a member of the Uruguayan chamber of fintech (camara uruguaya de fintech), a startup accelerator focused on the fintech sector. Urubit is a distributed token created in uruguay and deployed in the binance intelligent chain (bsc).
data from coin atm Radar shows that Colombia leads the South American market with 31 crypto ATM installations to date, which is followed by Brazil and Argentina at 22 and 11 installations respectively.
Other South American countries such as Ecuador, Venezuela, Aruba and Saint kits and nevis have also installed a crypto atm.
Inbierto has not yet replied to Cointelegraph's request for observations.
related: uruguayan senator introduces bill to enable use of crypto for payments
Last year, a Uruguayan senator introduced a bill to regulate cryptocurrency and allow businesses to accept crypto payments.
As reported cointelegraph, senator juan sartori was not eager to adopt crypto as a legal course. Instead, he proposed:
“today we present a bill that seeks to establish a legitimate, legal and safe use in businesses related to the production and commercialization of virtual currencies in uruguay.”
