Co-founder of crypto wallet provider BreadWallet, or BRD, which was once ranked as the fourth-most popular app in Venezuela, says the company’s success in Venezuela is less about marketing and more because of local demand for crypto driven by failing monetary policy.
CEO Adam Traidman stated that due to government policy, the currency was inflating dramatically, like it had in Argentina and Myanmar.
As the Venezuelan monetary crisis worsened during 2018, BRD momentarily became the fourth-most downloaded app in the entire country. “During times like that, there is always a rush where people go and they try to take money out of banks or out of cash, and they try to put it into more stable assets,” said Traidman.
Having previously lived in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires, Traidman recalls having witnessed first-hand the ordeal ordinary people go through to convert local fiat into stable foreign currencies. People literally trade in in their paycheck for a huge fee and then they get either physical dollars, euros, or they get crypto now—because crypto is a lot safer walking away from that corner, without a wad of cash, he says.
He believes that it fuelled downloads to the BRD app, which is decentralized.
