Level of LatAm Crypto Interest is Lowest in Chile, Survey Finds

Plaza de las Armas in Santiago, the capital of Chile. Source: Adobe /

Chileans are the “least interested people in crypto in the Latin American region,” a new survey has found – and over a quarter of respondents say they have no idea what Bitcoin (BTC) is.

In a study by the LatAm-focused PR agency Sherlock Communications, 2,700 people from across the region were interviewed, with a focus on Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Chile.

But while only 74% of Chileans said they “recognized” BTC, in Argentina it was even 92%.

In fact, Argentines seem to be more crypto-savvy than many other countries in the world, and 41% of respondents said they had heard of the number one altcoin token Ethereum (ETH). Another 30% of Argentina-based respondents said they knew Litecoin (LTC), and 16% also said they knew what Dogecoin (DOGE) was.

In contrast, between 10% and 18% of Chileans said they knew about these coins.

But when it comes to actually investing in crypto, Chileans are far more crypto-cautious than their neighbors and close neighbors.

Only 7% of Colombians said they were not interested in crypto, with the same number rising to 12% in Brazil and 17% in Chile.

In all five nations, about a third of respondents said their governments should introduce more crypto-related regulations. But Chileans were most skeptical of the lot when it came to assessing El Salvador’s decision to adopt BTC as legal tender.

Well over half of Brazilians, Mexicans and Colombians surveyed said they supported El Salvador’s BTC movement, with 48% of Brazilian respondents saying they wanted Brazil to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender as well.

Chile was the outlier in this regard, with only 36% of respondents believing that El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele made the right choice.

Over a quarter of respondents said they did not have enough money for crypto investments, but nearly half said crypto could be a powerful tool for international money transfers and fiat currency exchanges.

In the summer of this year, Chilean opposition leader Giorgio Jackson of the Democratic Revolution Party called on the government to officially recognize crypto as an asset class and admitted to owning an unspecified amount of ETH.