Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre launches cryptocurrency in Brazil

Latin America's largest e-commerce company by market capitalization, Mercado Libre (MELI), has reportedly announced the start of launching its cryptocurrency, Mercado Coin, in Brazil, which can be used to make purchases on Mercado Libre as a cashback reward. Mercado Libre expects the cryptocurrency to be available to its 80 million users in Brazil by the end of August and said it plans to bring it to other countries "soon" without providing further details. Mercado Coin is developed based on the ERC-20 token standard of the Ethereum blockchain, and users will not be able to transfer it to external wallets during the first phase.