Latin America saw several crypto and blockchain-related developments this week, including a livestock-backed credit operation in Brazil, new remittance figures from El Salvador, and a draft deregulation bill in Argentina that would bring digital assets and decentralized technologies further into capital markets.

Brazil Farm Uses Tokenized Cows as Loan Collateral

Engendro Velho, a farm in Paraná, Brazil, obtained a loan of nearly $20,000 by using a herd of 10 cows as collateral. The operation used decentralized technology to digitize information tied to each animal.

The farmer received a Financial Rural Product Note, known as CPR-F, valued at nearly $100,000 from BMP, a direct credit society. The deliverables represented by each cow were assigned to Target FIDC, a fintech company that registered the transaction using data from each animal.

Although livestock-backed credit operations are not new, the use of tokenization and ongoing monitoring can improve loan conditions for farmers. In agricultural credit, where collateral values can change with animal health, weight, and traceability, more frequent data access gives lenders a clearer view of the asset backing the operation. Creditors are able to check the status of the herd at any time, reducing uncertainty and lowering the risks associated with the loan.

Humberto Brenner, a director at Target FIDC, said this monitoring component can allow a cow to reach as much as 2.5 times the price it would have in comparable agreements without monitoring. “Monitoring eliminates that uncertainty,” Brenner said.

Crypto Represents 0.7% of El Salvador’s $5 Billion Remittance Market Five Years After Bitcoin Law

Figures released by the Central Bank of El Salvador showed that, during the first half of 2026, only $35.4 million of the country’s external remittance volume was sent through digital currency channels. That amount accounted for less than 1% of all remittances sent to the country in 2026, which exceeded $5 billion.

The figures offer a narrow but important gauge of everyday crypto use in a country that adopted bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 and has promoted digital currency infrastructure for payments. Remittances are one of the clearest use cases to measure because they involve recurring transfers from Salvadorans abroad to households in the country.

By comparison, cash remittances — funds delivered personally when senders travel from another country to El Salvador to visit relatives — increased to 3.8% of the total. Even so, crypto-based remittance volumes were well above the level recorded in the first half of 2025, when they totaled $25.4 million. The increase amounted to 39.1%.

Total remittances for the period also rose, moving from $4.84 billion to $5.06 billion. That represented an increase of $219.2 million, or 4.5%.

Remittance companies and banks remained the preferred channels for Salvadorans sending money home, intermediating more than 84% of the volume received from abroad.

Argentina Draft Bill Would Add Crypto and Blockchain to Capital Markets Rules

In Argentina, an early version of a Deregulation Bill prepared by Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger proposes major changes intended to incorporate digital assets and decentralized technologies into national financial markets. The stated aim is to create new possibilities for investors interested in these assets.

One of the central provisions of the draft would allow investment funds to invest in digital assets when such investments are consistent with the fund’s investment policy. According to early estimates, the measure could create demand for billions in digital assets.

“Today, crypto-assets are investment assets; it is a good thing to allow funds to invest in them—subject, of course, to regulations that the CNV must approve. It is not a case of just anyone going out to buy Bitcoin, nor is it just any crypto-asset,” an undisclosed source told Clarin.

The document also approves the tokenization of all negotiable securities, covering the issuance, custody, transfer, and sale of those assets through decentralized technologies. If advanced, the proposal would place crypto exposure and tokenized securities within the existing capital markets rulemaking process rather than leaving their use solely to private arrangements.