Argentina

Nearly one-fifth of the population of San Pedro, Argentina about 16,000 people, would invest in RainbowEx, piling tens of millions of dollars into the cryptocurrency exchange. Joining RainbowEx was easy, even for crypto newbies. First, they downloaded the app from a website — it never appeared on Apple or Google’s app stores. Then, they visited one of the local private lending institutions called financieras. A clerk there would convert Argentine pesos into Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar.

Argentina’s future program with the International Monetary Fund will be for $20 billion, while executive board approval could take weeks, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said at a conference Thursday, Bloomberg News reported. Caputo stopped short of announcing a formal staff-level agreement, but it’s the most concrete detail of the program after several months of negotiations between the IMF and President Javier Milei’s administration.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will discuss a new $20 billion loan for Argentina during an informal meeting this week, Bloomberg News reported. The IMF will discuss a four-year extended fund facility of about 15 billion Special Drawing Rights. Argentina's lower house last Wednesday passed a decree issued earlier in the month supporting a new IMF program, allowing the government to begin talks with the IMF to bolster central bank reserves and potentially undo capital controls.

Argentina's economy is expected to have registered year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2024, ending six consecutive quarters of year-on-year contraction and further lifting it out of recession, a Reuters poll of analysts showed on Monday. The average forecast from 15 local and international analysts showed Argentina's gross domestic product (GDP) expanding 1.7% in the last three months of 2024. "It's the first positive sign after six consecutive quarters of (year-over-year) contraction," said Pablo Besmedrisnik, economist and director of VDC Consultants.

Argentine President Javier Milei has signaled an imminent agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), aiming to secure fresh funding to stabilize the country’s fragile economy, the Rio Times reported. Speaking during his annual address to Congress, Milei framed the deal as essential for addressing Argentina’s chronic economic challenges, including inflation, currency restrictions, and fiscal imbalances. Milei’s government plans to use the IMF funds, estimated at $11 billion, to replenish the Central Bank’s depleted reserves and reduce Treasury debt owed to the Central Bank.

He is a college dropout who hawked energy drinks as a teen and sold Oreos to make rent. Under “skills” on LinkedIn, he listed “hustling expert.” Last month, Hayden Davis, 28 years old, became the face of the highest-profile cryptocurrency scandal since the implosion of FTX in 2022, one that has ensnared Argentine President Javier Milei, the Wall Street Journal reported. Propelled by self-confidence and networking savvy, Davis went from cookie seller to erstwhile crypto king, according to interviews and a review of more than a decade of social-media posts, podcasts and blog posts.

Argentina’s economy expanded more than expected in December, solidifying the country’s bounceback in the last quarter of the year under President Javier Milei’s watch, Bloomberg News reported. Economic activity rose 0.5% from November, more than the 0.2% median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Monthly growth beat expectations the previous month, too. From a year ago, the gross domestic product proxy grew 5.5%, compared with the median estimate of 3.5%, according to government data published Tuesday.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei warned Telefonica SA that his government will review the phone carrier’s plan to sell its local operations to Telecom Argentina SA for a possible breach of anti-monopoly rules, Bloomberg News reported. Telefonica signed and closed the $1.25 billion deal on Monday after more than three decades in the country, according to a regulatory filing. The Spanish carrier has been working since late 2019 to cut its exposure to Latin America.

Argentina’s central bank said payment intermediaries will have to enable debit card transactions in US currency by Feb. 28, marking a key step in President Javier Milei’s pledge to dollarize the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The bank also developed a program to allow people to make installed payments in either dollars or pesos. The move aims to “bolster currency competition in order to allow people and businesses to use the currency they wish in their daily transactions,” according to a central bank statement on Thursday.

Argentina's central bank will slow the rate of the local peso's devaluation, it said on Tuesday, after new data showed annual inflation slowing in December and as the central bank sees continued progress on inflation, Reuters reported. Beginning in February, the rate, known as the crawling peg, will slow to 1% per month from a prior rate of 2% due to "the consolidation observed in the inflationary trajectory during the last few months, and in the expectations of a decrease in inflation," the central bank said in a statement.