In the Argentina of Javier Milei, where the chainsaw promised to cut privileges and free markets, the Central Bank has just made a turn that smells more like a vintage clamp than a liberal revolution. The recent prohibition of selling official dollars through virtual wallets like Mercado Pago and Cocos Capital not only shook the fintech ecosystem: it left it trembling, with a "they asked us to shut down" as a digital epitaph.
š§Ø Deregulation? Free market? Lies!
The BCRA, chaired by Santiago Bausili, insists that there is no "new regulation", but rather a "clarification" of what is already in force. But in practice, the result is the same: users who until yesterday were buying dollars from their cell phones, today find a sign saying "service suspended". What is the official reason? Only banks and exchange houses can operate in the Single Free Exchange Market (MULC). What is the real reason? Institutional panic in the face of a fintech that offered a more competitive exchange rate than the banking dinosaurs.
š§ The double libertarian discourse
The most savory part of this novel is the ideological contradiction. Milei, the apostle of the free market, ends up applying a 'cepito' that even Cristina would not have dared to name. Wasn't the State supposed to withdraw from the economy? Wasn't it said that virtual wallets were the future? Well, the future has just been censored by a normative interpretation that seems to have been written by Kafka and executed by Stalin.
š„ Mercado Pago and Cocos Capital: victims of success
Both platforms had been offering official dollars through a 'turnkey' scheme with the Banco Industrial (BIND). The volume was minimal, but the symbolic impact was huge. In a country where the dollar is more than just a currency ā it is an emotional thermometer ā allowing the average citizen to buy it from their app was almost revolutionary. And like any revolution in Argentina, it lasted as long as it takes for a tweet to go viral.
š§ Concealed cepo or regulatory clumsiness?
The BCRA denies that this is a new cepo. But if it walks like a cepo, barks like a cepo, and bites like a cepoā¦ could it not be a cepo? The fintechs are not responsible for the exchange rate tension, but they are guilty of modernizing access to the dollar. And that, in Argentina with its friendly banks and currency exchange houses with red carpets, is unforgivable.
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š§Ø In summary: the 'cepito' is a slap in the face of innovation, a libertarian contradiction, and a signal that in Argentina, the dollar remains hostage to a system that fears competition more than inflation. Who said the market was free?
