The US exchange house Coinbase announced on Wednesday 17 the expansion of its services to five countries in Latin America: Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Colombia. According to official information, residents of these five Latin American countries will be able to store, exchange, send and receive cryptocurrencies through Coinbase Pro and Coinbase.com.

These five South American countries are among the nations with the highest commercialization of bitcoins through LocalBitcoins and higher levels of adoption in the continent. However, Venezuela, the country in Latin America with the highest volume of commercialization in the peer-to-peer platform, figures as the great absentee of this announcement.

The inclusion of Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Mexico was accompanied by six other nations that will be able to use all of Coinbase's services. These include the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and India, two countries that are particularly receptive to cryptocurrencies.

The expansive strategy of Coinbase, which now allows them to operate in 53 countries, coincides with what they call "the utility phase" in the cryptocurrency trade. According to its own statistics, for February of this year more than half of the exchanges made on its platforms were cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency. This trend has remained at similar levels since August 2018, which is why they consider that the "investment phase" has already been passed.

Coinbase is one of the most recognized exchange houses within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, so the incursion in the South American continent generated reactions among users of cryptocurrencies. In fact, some of them asked the criptoempresa when they would provide their services for other countries such as Brazil and Paraguay.

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