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Mercado Libre Ends Mercado Coin Program, Cites No Official Reason

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Mercado Libre Ends Mercado Coin Program, Cites No Official Reason

Mercado Coin Is Being Discontinued

The company notified users through the Mercado Pago digital wallet app and email. No public statement was issued. Mercado Libre introduced mercado coin in August 2022, starting in Brazil. The token was built as an ERC-20 asset on the Ethereum blockchain in partnership with crypto exchange Ripio and initially priced at roughly $0.10 per token.

Users earned it as cashback on purchases through Mercado Libre’s marketplace and could either spend mercado coin on the platform or cash it out. The intent was to bring everyday shoppers into the crypto space through a low-friction loyalty mechanism, no need to trade bitcoin or manage volatile assets. In practice, the token stayed inside the Mercado Libre ecosystem and never built meaningful traction elsewhere.

Starting April 17, users can no longer buy, sell, or earn mercado coin through the platform. Holders have three options before the deadline: sell tokens through the Mercado Pago app, spend the balance on Mercado Libre purchases, or do nothing. Any remaining balance after April 17 will be automatically converted to local fiat currency, Brazilian reais for most users, and deposited into their Mercado Pago account.

Mercado Libre gave no explanation in its user notifications for ending the program. The decision fits a pattern seen across large tech and e-commerce companies that built branded tokens during the 2021–2022 crypto expansion cycle. Many are stepping back from proprietary digital assets while keeping or expanding exposure to more established infrastructure like stablecoins and direct crypto trading.

Mercado Libre is not stepping away from crypto entirely. The company continues to offer crypto buying and selling, stablecoin transfers, and other digital asset services through Mercado Pago. It also launched its own dollar-backed stablecoin.

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On the treasury side, Mercado Libre holds more than $38 million in bitcoin. The company first disclosed a $7.8 million BTC purchase in 2021 and held 570.4 BTC as of 2025 disclosures. For the roughly 2 million users who held mercado coin at various points, the shutdown carries little practical disruption.

The token had no active secondary market and no meaningful external liquidity. The auto-conversion safety net means holders do not need to take action to recover value. The shutdown reflects a clearer strategic direction for Mercado Libre’s fintech arm: move away from proprietary engagement tokens and focus on payment rails, stablecoins, and crypto custody that serve users across Latin America at scale.

Mercado Pago processes payments for hundreds of millions of users across the region. The company’s decision to retire a niche loyalty token while keeping broader crypto services active suggests the experiment was always peripheral to its core fintech build-out.

Mercado coin’s shutdown closes a chapter on one of Latin America’s more prominent corporate crypto loyalty programs, one that launched with regional ambitions but ended quietly with an auto-convert notice in a wallet app.

FAQ 🔎

  • What is mercado coin? Mercado coin was an ERC-20 loyalty token launched by Mercado Libre in Brazil in August 2022 that let users earn cashback on purchases through the Mercado Libre marketplace.
  • When does mercado coin shut down? Mercado coin will no longer be available to buy, sell, or earn starting April 17, 2026.
  • What happens to remaining mercado coin balances after the shutdown? Any mercado coin balance not spent or sold by April 17, 2026 will be automatically converted to local fiat currency and deposited into the user’s Mercado Pago account.
  • Is Mercado Libre leaving the crypto market? No — Mercado Libre continues to offer crypto trading, stablecoin services, and holds over $38 million in bitcoin on its balance sheet.
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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

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While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

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Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.


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Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
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