Mercado Libre, an Argentinian, Nasdaq-listed e-commerce giant, became the latest firm to embrace crypto pay last week. But its CEO appears to have had a rather dramatic change of heart on the matter – as he was publicly bashing bitcoin (BTC)’s payment credentials less than 12 months ago.
To call Mercado Libre the Argentinian Amazon would be something of an understatement. It is one of the country’s richest and busiest companies. And in addition to product sales, users can also sell their houses on it, and the platform also hosts online auctions, automobile sales and offers lines of credit.
Last week, the firm announced that its real estate arm would begin accepting BTC in a special new section of the platform devoted to crypto deals. Unlike many other firms that accept BTC payments but list prices in fiat, the new section of the website groups properties together by BTC price (properties costing less than BTC 1.5, under BTC 2 etc).
Juan Manuel Carretero, Mercado Libre’s Real Estate business lead was quoted as enthusing:
“Hmm… People have been saying that about bitcoin for the past five years. It seems to have an endless childhood!”
And in an interview conducted by PayPal in October last year, Galperin opined that crypto might have worth as a store of value, it was not cut out to make it in the world of payments.
He stated that “scaling” problems beset the idea of crypto pay, dues to “very high energy costs.”
And he added,