As LATAM Is Turning to Stablecoins, Crypto-Native Media Faces Its Quietest Hour in Q2
By nearly every measure, Latin America is undergoing an unprecedented boom in crypto adoption and stablecoin payments.
Visa’s latest partnership with Bridge lets users spend stablecoins on everyday purchases while giving merchants the flexibility to receive payment in their local currency. The partnership was announced in April and is live in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Chile.
Meanwhile, municipal tax payments in Buenos Aires are now crypto-enabled, and Argentina is driving tokenization initiatives, while Tether backed Bit2Me with a €30 million investment to expand regional access. Such moves show that major industry players see Latin America as more than a passing bet.
Meanwhile, governments are also embracing the crypto industry. For example, Buenos Aires launched the BA Crypto program that allows municipal tax payments in crypto.
Crypto adoption is also showing signs of momentum. Argentina and Brazil are the region’s strongest markets and account for over a third of LATAM residents who hold crypto. Argentina alone boasts nearly 20% crypto penetration, while millennial adoption stands at 21.9% compared to just 14.1% among Gen X. Smaller markets are also gaining traction fast: Bolivia jumped 355%, Guatemala 88%, and Paraguay 52% in Q2.
One would assume the region’s momentum is attracting a lot of media attention and news outlets are taking full advantage of the boom. But this is not the case, as the crypto-native mediascape is showing signs of struggling.
According to crypto public relations agency Outset PR, LATAM crypto publications lost half of their audience quarter-over-quarter and now boast just one high-traffic outlet. At the same time, mainstream sites and AI-driven discovery are taking the lead.
Outset PR chart illustrates worsening traffic trends for LATAM crypto-native outlets in Q2 2025
What’s concerning is this represents a continuation of poor trends, based on a similar first quarter research report that showed that in Q1, crypto-native traffic had already dropped 23% between January and March, sliding from 6.98M to 5.37M visits.
Crypto-Native Media’s Visibility Crisis
It wasn’t only Latin America’s crypto-native media losing ground. A comparable pattern emerged in Western and Eastern Europe, where discovery was dominated by direct and organic channels.
While it remains to be seen if this represents an extinction-level collapse, the findings are still very concerning.
The region, which just a short time ago claimed six tier-one crypto outlets, now has just one: CriptoNoticias. The Mexico-based site posted 1.35 million visits in Q2 and claimed 16.4% of all crypto-dedicated traffic. Former top-tier publishers, now relegated to the mid-tier category, include Cointelegraph Brasil and Bitfinanzas, which collectively represent a fraction of mainstream volumes.
Brazil dominates crypto-native readership (61.8%), yet Argentina’s massive mainstream audience (56.1%) now absorbs most crypto news. Mexico (18.3% of crypto-native) and Colombia (8.6%) also play key roles, while smaller contributors like Peru, Venezuela, and Costa Rica remain marginal.
Brazil captured the largest share of crypto-native media traffic in Q2 2025, while Venezuela accounted for the smallest slice
Q1 also flagged suspicious spikes in the Dominican Republic, where inflated traffic quickly collapsed, which comes as a reminder that not all audience numbers in the region are organic.
Notably, audience engagement is eroding. Only 27.8% of crypto-focused outlets saw any growth in Q2; 72.2% declined, with visit durations and session depth often falling below meaningful levels. Even among “breakout” publishers, bounce rates jumped past 50%, and some outlets registered sessions averaging under one minute. These are all signs of weakening audience loyalty.
Traffic sources reinforce the challenge: crypto-native outlets leaned almost equally on direct (44%) and organic search (44%) in Q2, while referrals (6%), social (6%), and paid (<1%) played only minor roles. Without diversified discovery channels, exposure remains fragile.
Mainstream Media and the Rise of AI Discovery
While crypto-native outlets are collapsing, mainstream and generalist news sites are consolidating power. These sites, which cover a wide range of topics including crypto, grew their reach by 8% in Q2, even though most lost at least some traffic. Mainstream platforms attract larger audiences and benefit from widespread syndication and content-sharing networks.
Outset PR’s data show that AI tools delivered only 0.97% of overall crypto-native traffic, but nearly 1.41% for generalist portals. Editors noted in a survey that they are seeing falling Google traffic and now have an urgent need to optimize headlines for intent rather than SEO keywords.
Mainstream sites in Latin America secured higher AI-driven traffic than crypto-native outlets, Outset PR data reveals
“Most crypto searches on AI platforms turn up mainstream news sites first, especially those that have spent years earning a reputation and building connections across the web,” says Maximilian Fondé, Outset PR’s senior media analyst. “For crypto-native publishers, the challenge appears to represent an existential threat: without adaptation, these outlets risk vanishing as discovery skips traditional channels.”
The region’s most important crypto stories taking place in its backyard risk being told by outsiders.
Who Will Carry LATAM’s Crypto Narrative Forward?
Stablecoin payments in Latin America are scaling quickly, reshaping how people spend and save. But at the very moment when crypto is embedding itself into daily financial life, the media voices best positioned to tell that story are fading.
The disconnect raises bigger questions: Who will shape the narrative as adoption spreads? Will mainstream outlets and AI platforms take permanent ownership of the conversation, or can crypto-native publishers reinvent themselves to stay relevant?
The region now sits at a crossroads. Stablecoins are proving their utility, adoption is surging, and governments are experimenting with new frameworks. If crypto-native media can’t reclaim visibility, Latin America’s transformation may be documented almost entirely from the outside. For an ecosystem built on decentralization and local empowerment, that would be an ironic twist.
