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Argentina’s Vibrant Bitcoin Scene
Latin America is home to a vibrant Web3 builder ecosystem. While the region has enormous economic potential in terms of technical talent and entrepreneurial drive, it has also struggled against the backdrop of hyperinflation and economic instability. As a result of that instability, Latin America is one of the earliest regions to see the potential in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and adopt them - that’s particularly true for Argentina. Argentina alone is home to companies like Rootstock, Ripio, Buenbit, Belo, Agrotoken, Lemon Cash, Decentraland, and Makerdao.
In Buenos Aires, the builder community has established several centers such as LaCrypta and Aleph. LaCrypta is a Bitcoin-centric community space located in the Belgrano neighborhood. It’s a Neo-Gothic brick house flanked by modern apartment buildings on either side. While they are known for their world-famous annual Halloween party, this isn’t just an event space. They also build and incubate software products and host Bitcoin educational workshops. Aleph is a newer community space in the Palermo neighborhood, with a broader web3 focus.
Buenos Aires is also home to LaBitConf, an annual gathering of builders and technologists from across the region. It was the ideal location for our first hacker house.
Growing a Grassroots Stacks Community in LATAM
Before launching a successful hacker house, we first needed to find hackers. For this, we enlisted the support of Angel Espinoza and Jonathan Nolasco, the two community leads behind Stacks LATAM. Stacks LATAM organized 6 meetups, across 4 countries with a total of 150 participants - all just in time for the Nakamoto upgrade. From those meetups, Stacks LATAM recruited developers to participate in a virtual hackathon in collaboration with other LATAM builders in the ICP ecosystem. 18 projects were submitted in this hackathon, of those projects, 9 teams (4 Stacks teams and 5 ICP teams) were invited to Buenos Aires to pitch their projects and attend LaBitConf.
"The hackathon was an incredible experience to build in a new interesting ecosystem alongside such talented people from different countries across Latin America. The hackathon allowed us to develop an idea in a record amount of time, and this helped us realize our own skills and our potential as a team. We’re grateful for Stacks and Hiro folks who lent us support and feedback. We want to stay active in the ecosystem and keep building together." - Andrés Peña: Product Designer | UX & Arquitectura
For the hacker house, we took over a small apartment building in Palermo and used Aleph for coworking and workshops, the day before LaBitConf began. Finalists pitched their projects to judges depending on their tech stack. In between hacking, we debated our favorite meme coins and best alpha over the finest pizza, milanesa and beer Buenos Aires had to offer.
The Stacks hackathon winner was Sphinx, an AI-powered quiz game. Each day, week or month, Sphinx proposes a question based on current events, historical facts and global trends. Users can participate by paying a small amount of sBTC to answer, with the most voted answer taking the lion's share of the reward pool. IntiDAO won second place, a no-code platform that makes it easy for anyone to spin up a Bitcoin-based DAO. Identrip came in third with a platform that improves the trust and transparency of online reviews, starting in Cusco, Peru.
Once LaBitConf kicked off, devs were able to hear talks from Bitcoin core developers, privacy cryptographers and other builders from throughout LATAM. Hiro’s Staff Engineer Rafael Cardenas gave two technical workshops covering Clarity and chainhooks.
Conclusion
In just a few days, we got to experience firsthand a region with a strong Stacks footprint, and it was great to connect with such an active part of our community. We hope to be back soon, and we hope the Stacks developer community continues to grow worldwide!
If you’d like to get involved with the Stacks community, join the Discord, try the Code 4 Stacks program for the chance to earn STX every month, and start building!
