Conference Presentation, Panel, Fireside Chat
Next Tech Frontier: How Latin America Does It Best | Global Conference 2025
Milken InstituteRodrigo Bettini, Julio Vasconcellos, Roberto Campos Neto, Cesar Carvalho, Maya Dadoo, Scott Sobel, Cesar Gonzalez
- Latin America is positioned as a long-term strategic priority for global investors, with venture capital flows predicted to rebound to $15 billion annually and the region's top 10 economy status expected to be fully tokenized by 2030.
- Digital transformation is forecasted to expand across finance, housing, and labor markets, driven by regulatory support, capital access, and human talent, leading to a projected shift from informal to formal employment as digital payment adoption increases.
- Specific companies are planning to scale regionally or globally, including WellHub's anticipated expansion into the U.S. market to surpass Brazil as its largest revenue source, and Worky's expected entry into the second wave of venture capital investment in Mexico.
- The financial sector is expected to undergo structural shifts where cash registers and traditional banks transition toward programmability, tokenization, and data portability, enabling new financial products like wage advances and instant payroll loans for underserved populations.
- Technology integration is anticipated to accelerate, with Scott Sobel predicting a 50 to 100 times growth in tokenized on-chain assets by 2030 and Roberto Campos highlighting the critical, though currently uncertain, role of AI in open data and the intersection of tokenization with open finance.
- Market dynamics are characterized by high multiples due to limited competition in lightly served markets, with venture funds expected to continue outperforming global benchmarks and real-world asset tokenization becoming a key development facilitated by Brazil's PIX infrastructure.
- Risk and uncertainty remain regarding the unorganized versus organized integration of stablecoins and crypto with traditional banking systems, as well as the full understanding of how the intersection between tokenization and open finance will evolve.