Paradigm has led a roughly $9 million funding round in El Dorado, a stablecoin-powered payments application built for Latin America. The deal pushes one of crypto's largest venture firms deeper into dollar-rails for emerging markets.
The round was reported by The Block, which said Paradigm led the financing of about $9 million. El Dorado runs a peer-to-peer marketplace and payments app that lets users in the region buy, hold and send digital dollars, mostly the Tether stablecoin USDT. The company says its SuperApp has crossed one million users and connects stablecoins to dozens of local payment channels.
El Dorado targets a region where access to US dollars is constrained by capital controls, inflation and thin banking coverage. Its app links USDT and other dollar tokens to local rails across Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Panama and Peru, letting users move value between bank apps, cash networks and digital wallets. The company wound down its Venezuela operations earlier, though Venezuela had been one of its strongest markets.
The product started as a peer-to-peer exchange and has expanded into a broader payments stack. Its El Dorado Pay feature handles instant transfers between users, and the app routes settlement through USDT on Arbitrum to cut transaction costs. Tether and Mountain Protocol's USDM are the dollar tokens it leans on most.
