A sign of Mexico’s growing interest in Bitcoin, the country’s Senate building now houses its 14th Bitcoin (BTC) ATM. The ATM was put up on April 26, with the support of a number of lawmakers, including Miguel Angel Mancera, head of Mexico’s parliamentary group for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and other officials.
Senator Indira Kempis, who is an outspoken crypto enthusiast, expressed her excitement on Twitter about the development. She stated that it was “for freedom, inclusion and financial education in Mexico.”
According to Coin ATM Radar statistics, Mexico had 13 such machines in Mexico City, Tijuana, Cancún, Guadalajara, Culiacán, San Miguel de Cozumel and Aguascalientes before.
After the BTC ATM was put up, a local news article from El Heraldo de Mexico stated that the PRD representative claimed that Bitcoin has already surpassed the transaction volume of traditional payment systems like PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard.
In recent months, Mexico’s interest in cryptocurrencies has grown. According to Triple A’s crypto ownership research for 2021, 40% of Mexican businesses are interested in using blockchain and cryptocurrency in some way. Of this group, 71% are focused on cryptocurrency use.
Furthermore, according to the data, Mexico’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, Bitso, experienced a 342 percent rise in volume in 2020. The company also has over 1 million users (92% are Mexicans).
Indira Kempis, a Nuevo León state senator, said in February that she is confident that Bitcoin should be a legal currency in Mexico because it has the potential to expand financial inclusion across the world. However, Ricardo Salinas, a billionaire, and Bitcoin advocate thinks attaining this will be an “uphill fight” due to his nation’s dependence on fiat control as “fiat fraud.”
