Will FTX’s ill wind reach the Global South? Maybe not

cointelegraph.com:

With the crypto world still reeling from the FTX collapse, Brazil recently passed legislation that legalized cryptocurrency use for payments in the country. How to reconcile this with all those declarations in the West that crypto is having its “Lehman moment”? 

Brazil may have inadvertently revealed a cleft between the developed world and emerging markets with regard to the uses and misuses of cryptocurrencies. (The legislation still requires a presidential signature before it becomes law.)

Unquestionably, FTX’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing hurt crypto exchanges and other crypto-focused enterprises in Brazil, as well as many crypto-based companies all through Latin America (LATAM). But this latest gale in the crypto winter is generally not seen as an existential threat — as it is sometimes portrayed in Western media.

“It [FTX’s implosion] was certainly a net negative everywhere,” Omid Malekan, author and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, told Cointelegraph. “But how much people are deterred is a function of whether they have access to stable currencies or reliable payment products.”

Many businesses in South America have felt pain from the crypto winter, David Tawil, president of ProChain Capital, told Cointelegraph. There's been a slowdown in trading activity, layoffs and a decline in venture capital investments. Yet crypto practitioners in South America “are still plowing ahead,” he said, because through much of the region, “crypto is functional, it has a real utility” in ways that are not fully understood or recognized in the West.

Stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are much more important in countries like Argentina and Brazil where the government has implemented capital controls that limit