When the Ledger Speaks Louder Than the Mint: Stablecoins, Sovereignty, and the Pedagogy of Trust in Latin America

In Buenos Aires last year, merchants who once taped peso price lists to their windows replaced them with QR codes linked to tether wallets. By December, Argentines had moved the equivalent of US$91.1 billion through crypto rails, and 61.8% of that flow rode on dollar‑pegged stablecoins—an amount larger than the country’s merchandise trade surplus and more than double the central bank’s usable foreign‑currency reserves.