Bitcoiners waiting for a “Bukele moment” in Chile are ignoring a $229 billion signal that matters more

Chile has made a hard pivot. In a decisive Dec. 14 runoff, José Antonio Kast, a conservative former congressman and leader of the Republican Party, won the presidency with roughly 58% of the vote over leftist Jeannette Jara.

It marks Chile’s starkest rightward shift since the return to democracy. Markets took it as a deregulatory signal: the peso and equities firmed on expectations of looser labor rules, lower corporate taxes, and a law-and-order push aimed at crime and migration pressures that dominated the campaign.

Kast’s road to La Moneda ran straight through public anxiety about security and stagnant growth. His platform blended a pledge to “restore order” with promises to revive private investment, particularly around copper.

He also tempered some edges of prior campaigns to court center-right voters in a split Congress. The immediate post-election message was unity, but the political math ahead suggests incrementalism.

Still, Kast campaigned in the regional slipstream of leaders who built brands on security and deregulatory rhetoric. He has openly invoked El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele as a model on crime, and his comparisons to “tough on crime” governance resonated with Chileans frustrated by organized crime and migration shocks.

Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei promptly met Kast in Buenos Aires days after the vote, a snapshot of ideological alignment across the Andes. Even so, each faces different constraints at home.

That political backdrop naturally raises a crypto question: does a rightward turn put Chile on a Bukele-style path for Bitcoin?

The short answer from Chile’s institutions and market structure is no. The longer answer is more interesting and more globally relevant.

Chile is not El Salvador—and that’s the point

It’s tempting to reach for the El Salvador analogy. In 2021, President Nayib Bukele made Bitcoin legal tender, a first-of-its-kind political statement that still shapes headlines today.

Whatever you think of its outcomes, the move was top-down and symbolic. Chile’s path is likely to be bottom-up and technocratic, driven more by legal and technical constraints than politics.

Three anchors make Chile different. First, the central bank (BCCh) has spent recent years doing the opposite of crypto theater.

It has published sober CBDC analyses and implemented the Fintech Act’s open-finance regime alongside the Financial Market Commission (CMF). That kind of engagement signals caution, not sudden gambits like making crypto legal tender.

Second, the pension system towers over the local market. By the end of 2024, Chile’s pension funds held $186.4 billion.

By mid-2025, that figure climbed above $207 billion. By October, it had reached roughly $229.6 billion.

That’s $229.6 billion in assets that move only when governance, risk, custody, and valuation boxes are ticked. This is a system that absorbs new asset classes via regulated wrappers, not presidential tweets.

Third, Chilean tax and compliance rules already treat crypto like an income-taxable asset. That reinforces the idea that adoption will flow through formal intermediaries (brokers, funds, banks) rather than mandates at the checkout counter.

That’s the macro backdrop. It’s also why Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, the co-founder and CSO of Bitcoin lender Ledn, thinks Chile’s “crypto moment” won’t look anything like El Salvador’s or Argentina’s.

“I believe it is unlikely that the Chilean Central Bank and the new government will make an attempt to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country,” he tells us.

The better fit, in his view, is incremental policy that normalizes usage. That could include de minimis tax relief for small transactions and clear permission for banks to offer custody and buy/sell services.

The goal is to let citizens and companies hold BTC locally without legal ambiguity.

Follow the rails: ETFs, bank custody, and (eventually) pensions

So what shows up first on the ground?

“Local ETF products that let regulated entities get exposure,” says Di Bartolomeo, pointing to the wave of spot Bitcoin ETFs abroad as a template.

In the US, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) kicked off trading in January 2024 and quickly turned the asset into portfolio-grade exposure for traditional institutions. Chile doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel; it needs to translate it into local wrappers and distribution.

From there, the gating factor is bank rails. If the central bank and CMF establish a clear permission set for bank-level custody and facilitation, everyday access follows.

That includes brokerage integration, discretionary portfolio sleeves, collateralized lending, and corporate treasury programs that can hold and hedge.

Chile has been methodical about building those frameworks via the Fintech Act (Law 21,521) and the Open Finance System regulation issued in mid-2024. That foundation enables banks to add new services without breaking risk controls.

But what about the elephant in the room: pensions (AFPs)? Di Bartolomeo’s view is pragmatic: pensions are rule-bound vehicles, often barred from buying international funds directly or limited in how they can hold assets not domiciled in Chile.

That’s why “jurisdictional opportunities” matter. If international spot ETF units are off-limits, he said domestic ETFs or ETNs could be the bridge AFPs need.

Even then, sizing would start small, gated by custody standards, valuation methods, risk buckets, and tax treatment. These are the mundane, make-or-break details that almost never make headlines.

The numbers illustrate the stakes. A pension system that ended 2024 at $186.4 billion and kept growing through 2025 doesn’t need to move much to matter.

A 25–50 bps sleeve via local wrappers would represent billions of dollars in potential flow over time. But it also means regulators will want custody segregation, price-source integrity, and stress-testable liquidity before the first basis point moves.

Chile’s stance on stablecoins also fits this “regulated rails” thesis. Legal analysis this year highlighted how the Fintech Law framework can recognize and channel stablecoin use into the formal system.

It’s a careful approach that reduces informal dollarization risks while preserving monetary control. Expect near-term clarity here to accelerate retail-grade on-ramps.

Catalysts, deal-killers, and the scoreboard to watch

If the base case is that rails come first, what could speed it up or stop it? Di Bartolomeo’s top deal-killers are institutional: (1) any central-bank restrictions on domestic BTC buy/sell, (2) punitive tax treatment for BTC investments, and (3) limits on USD-pegged stablecoin usage.

Each would push activity offshore or into the shadows, which is the opposite of Chile’s decade-long project to deepen and formalize its markets.

On the other hand, the catalysts are straightforward: bank custody guidance, securities-regulator green lights for local ETFs/ETNs, and clear compliance pathways for distribution.

On the policy scoreboard, there’s already motion. The BCCh has released two CBDC reports (2022 and 2024), evidence of a central bank that prefers deliberate architecture to headline-grabbing experiments.

The CMF is executing a 2025–26 regulatory plan and has been rolling out Open Finance rules since 2024. That’s the legal plumbing that makes secure, interoperable data-sharing, and, by extension, new products, possible.

None of that screams “legal tender.”

And politics? Kast’s victory, hailed by regional conservatives and followed by an early bilateral with Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei, sets a deregulatory tone.

But the Chilean system still funnels change through institutions. Markets rallied on the result, Congress remains split, and the first hundred days will be defined by what the government can push through the rule-making grinder, not sweeping monetary experiments.

For those invested in the future of crypto in Chile, Di Bartolomeo’s advice is refreshingly testable. The first hints will likely be filings for local Bitcoin ETFs or ETNs and, in quick succession, banks signaling intent with custody and basic buy-and-sell capabilities.

He argues this isn’t about theatrics, but enabling ordinary on-ramps:

“A strong signal for broader adoption would be banks offering any Bitcoin-related services or products, or policy discussions around updating banking policies to allow for this.”

He believes this shift could normalize holding and transacting locally without ambiguity. From there, attention moves to pensions.

Any circular that widens eligible-asset menus, or even just clarifies valuation and safekeeping standards for digital assets, would open the door for small, testable sleeves of exposure inside Chile’s biggest pools of capital, especially if domestic wrappers make access operationally simple.

On the retail and commerce edge, narrowly drawn tax relief would help experimentation without forcing it. Di Bartolomeo points to de minimis-style exemptions for small payments already debated in the US as a model Chile could adopt to let people use and receive bitcoin for payments.

He also flags stablecoins as a live policy lever:

“I would also look at policies around usage of USD-pegged stablecoins like Tether, as these are increasingly being used as money in the region,” a path he says could still funnel users toward Bitcoin over time.

Chile’s crypto future likely won’t be decided on a podium, but in term sheets, rulebooks, and custody audits. That’s not as viral as El Salvador’s legal-tender rollout, but it’s a path that could scale.

As Di Bartolomeo puts it:

“I don’t see an immediate case for Bitcoin to be used as money in Chile.”

The tell will be banks. If that happens, pensions can come later—and it won’t take many basis points to move the needle.