Argentina has banned the burning or tearing of the country's legal tender, the peso, at a Buenos Aires football stadium.

On August 10, the Argentine government issued a proclamation criminalizing any form of destruction of the ARS, despite the South American country’s year-on-year inflation rate exceeding 100%.

Fans from the neighboring country tore up and burned peso notes in the stadium to anger their Argentine opponents. In response, the body for the prevention of violence in sport said law enforcement officers would arrest offenders and sentence them to up to a month in prison, and their clubs would also be fined.

Argentina is in the midst of a deep economic crisis. Data from the Argentine Statistics Institute shows that the prices of essential goods have more than doubled since mid-2022.

The country’s deteriorating economic situation has coincided with a steady increase in the number of citizens using cryptocurrencies to circumvent capital controls, which make it difficult to move money in and out of Argentina.

Its foreign exchange rate has also fallen sharply, with 1,000 Argentine pesos currently worth $3.49. Earlier this year, the Central Bank of Argentina issued a new 2,000-peso note to prevent citizens from carrying large amounts of cash for daily expenses.

But despite this, data from financial market analyst Triple A shows that more than 5.6% of Argentines own cryptocurrencies, up from 2.9% a year ago. This means that the country has added about 1.2 million new cryptocurrency users in the past 12 months.

In March 2022, media reported that more and more Argentines were choosing to pay in Bitcoin ( BTC ) due to a loss of confidence in the peso. As of this writing, 1 BTC is equivalent to approximately 8.4 million Argentine pesos.

Argentina currently ranks 13th out of 146 countries in terms of the most common use of cryptocurrencies. According to Statista, Argentinians account for approximately 8% of the world’s cryptocurrency users.