Crypto ran my life for ten days.
It paid for my flights, my hotels, my buses and one emergency pair of sneakers when the right one died on a staircase in Valparaíso. It bought me a tango show in San Telmo where a dancer pulled me onto the floor, and the room watched me embarrass myself in real time. It funded the three bottles of Malbec sitting on my desk right now, paid for at a wine boutique that displayed its USDT address in 12-point Comic Sans.
The rule was no fiat. The starting wallet held DOT, LINK, XMR, ADA and POL. The plan was Brazil, then Chile, then Argentina. The plan held until day six.
Two tools did the work.
SimpleSwap is where I work. It’s a self-custodial swap aggregator: under the hood, it pulls liquidity from 20+ CEX and DEX sources and picks the route for each swap on its own. From my side, the crypto leaves one wallet I control and lands at another wallet I control. That’s it.
Bitrefill is the bridge from crypto to the real world. You pay in crypto and get a gift card or eSIM in return. The gift card works on Hotels.com, FlightGift, Uber Eats and most major retailers that a traveller actually meets.
Those were the two services I lived on. One wallet, ten days, three countries, no fiat allowed.
Day 0. Istanbul. The night before.
I converted Polkadot into a beach hotel. Then I converted Chainlink into a plane ticket. Then, Monero led to a waterfall excursion outside Rio that I would later need an offline map and 11% battery to escape. The cat slept through it all on the open suitcase.
Eight swaps in fifteen minutes. Wallet-to-wallet, no exchange account to top up, no long-term balance sitting on a platform I don’t control. The kettle boiled twice. The cat did not move. By midnight, Brazil — and the flight home out of Buenos Aires — was paid for.
Swap log, Istanbul:
- DOT → BTC · €300 · 2:31 · Hotels.com via Bitrefill, Rio and São Paulo
- LINK → ETH · €640 · 1:58 · FlightGift Istanbul–Rio
- DOT → ETH · €870 · 2:44 · FlightGift Buenos Aires–Istanbul (return leg, booked up front)
- XMR → USDT · €120 · 3:14 · ActivityGift waterfall plus food buffer
- ADA → BTC · €95 · 2:07 · Outback Brazil and Santa Luzia cards
- POL → USDT · €46 · 1:59 · Bitrefill eSIMs for the whole trip
- DOT → USDT · €28 · 2:03 · PPQ.ai gift card (a crypto-payable AI chat aggregator that routes you to Claude, GPT, Gemini and others)
- LINK → USDT · €34 · 1:44 · Migros Turkey for travel pillow, coffee, snacks
Days 1–2. Rio de Janeiro.
The Ibis Copacabana check-in is gloriously boring, which is the whole point. I booked the room on Hotels.com the night before in Istanbul, paid with a gift card I’d bought on Bitrefill and redeemed it on Hotels.com. So at the desk, there is nothing crypto-shaped to scan: the receptionist pulls up an ordinary confirmation, the screen beeps once, she nods, and I get a keycard.
By Tuesday afternoon, I am standing on a trail past the second cascade with no signal, 11% battery and a screenshot of the route PPQ.ai had sketched out for me that morning, back when I still had hotel wifi. PPQ had told me about the second cascade. What it could not do — being an AI you reach over the internet, not an offline oracle in your pocket — was tell me anything new once the bars died. I make it back to the lot at 3%, which is a generous accounting of dignity.
Dinner is Outback Botafogo on a gift card. The server squints at the redemption code like it’s a magic trick that might not work. It works.
Day 2 is Christ the Redeemer in the morning and Copacabana in the afternoon. The metro takes only cash, so I walk. The caipirinha kiosks take only cash, so I watch other people drink while eating dried apricots from a Migros gift card. The trip is thirty hours old.
Day 3. Rio to São Paulo, and the next swap session.
FlixBus ticket, bought with BTC two days earlier in Istanbul. Seat 14 puts me next to Bruno, a São Paulo day trader who has TradingView open before the driver even starts the engine. Bruno is 70% in a Solana memecoin I have never heard of. He shows me a screenshot from three weeks ago of his wallet briefly holding $300K. I show him SimpleSwap. We agree that life is volatile.
Dinner in Vila Madalena: Santa Luzia. Jamón ibérico, manchego, a natural Serra Gaúcha wine. Best meal in Brazil. Then I open my laptop in a wine bar with bossa nova too loud for real work, and fund Chile.
Swap log, São Paulo:
- POL → ETH · €180 · 1:52 · FlightGift São Paulo–Santiago
- DOT → USDT · €300 · 2:18 · Hotels.com for Santiago and Valparaíso
- LINK → BTC · €110 · 1:44 · Uber Eats Chile credit, three loads
- ADA → SOL · €18 · 2:03 · FlixBus Santiago ↔ Valparaíso return
Days 4–5. São Paulo to Santiago, then everywhere on foot.
FlightGift. Window seat. The Andes punch through the clouds like the cover of a tourism brochure, except real and slightly more menacing.
Hotel Ismael 312 is paid for by a São Paulo wine bar. Santiago’s metro runs on a Bip! card. The Bip! card takes only cash. So I walk from the bus stop at the airport. Two kilometres in a heat I had not emotionally budgeted for.
Day 5: Cerro San Cristóbal. The funicular takes only cash. PPQ suggests a walking path that turns out to be 2.8 km uphill at a gradient that begs forgiveness. At the summit, I eat a cazuela ordered via Uber Eats Chile, picked up at the base in a paper bag, now cold. The view across the Andes is worth a cold cazuela.
Somewhere on the descent, the sole of my right sneaker starts separating. I ignore it.
Day 6. Valparaíso, and the swap I did not plan for.
Valparaíso is built on the sides of forty-five hills. The ascensores cost 300 pesos in cash, so I walk every hill for five hours like a man with something to prove.
The sneaker gives up on Cerro Bellavista. Clean separation, toe to heel. A kid on the staircase laughs. I sit down on the step and laugh too. He says something I do not catch, possibly an offer to sell me his own shoes.
I did not budget for new sneakers. I open SimpleSwap on the staircase.
Spontaneous swap, Valparaíso:
- XMR → BTC · €85 · 3:41 · Sparta Chile gift card → new sneakers
Eight minutes of flapping-shoe walking to the Sparta store. The cashier examines the dead sole, looks at me, says something fast in Spanish that includes the word increíble. I nod as if I have understood and as if I am being praised.
Dinner is an empanada de papa on an ocean terrace, ordered via Uber Eats Chile. Valparaíso’s port restaurants take only pesos. The empanada costs €4. The Pacific at dusk costs nothing and arguably should cost more.
Day 7. Valparaíso to Santiago. An honest reckoning.
Return FlixBus. Afternoon in Barrio Italia, where the vintage shops are open in the rain, and the card machine in my chosen café is down. I ordered a coffee via Uber Eats to the café’s own address. It arrives ten minutes later on the back of a moped. The barista watches this happen with what I can only describe as professional curiosity.
In the evening, I check the wallet. The shoes cost me more than expected. Argentina is underfunded. I have one position left.
Swap log, Santiago evening:
- ADA → USDT · €450 · 2:11 · Argentina leg topped up
Day 8. Santiago to Buenos Aires.
FlightGift. One more window seat over the Andes, who are starting to feel like a recurring character. Hotel Noi Esplendor in San Telmo.
The airport taxi driver pulls a USDT QR code from behind his sun visor without being asked. Buenos Aires inflation is sitting around 30 per cent. He knew about USDT before I did.
San Telmo on a Sunday means Plaza Dorrego, where an older couple with a suitcase-sized speaker has roughly 30 years of weekly tango stored in their joints. I stand there for forty minutes pretending to take photos.
That evening is ActivityGifttango show with dinner and Malbec. Halfway through, a dancer pulls me onto the floor. I am, in real time, the worst tango performer in the building’s history. The room laughs with me, then laughs slightly less generously. I sit back down without dignity, but with a story.
Day 8 purchases:
- USDT → ActivityGift tango show · €95
- USDT → Carrefour Argentina · €34
- USDT → Tonel Privado wine delivery · €28
Day 9. Buenos Aires. The one fiat moment.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is a theatre that was converted into a bookshop. I wander for an hour and find a book on the history of the Río de la Plata. The register takes only cash. So I photographed the cover and ordered the same book with an Amazon gift card for delivery to Istanbul in 9 days, which means I will have forgotten about it by then.
Lunch is at Pertutti: a tostado mixto, standing outside in the January sun, which in the Southern Hemisphere is an aggressive thing.
Then I open my wallet to fund the wine boutique on Calle Defensa. Wallet balance: €11.
Argentina has emptied me. The shoes, the tango show, two nights in San Telmo, and three wine bottles I refuse to leave the continent without. I did not plan for any of it. So I plan for it now.
I open SimpleSwap. Not to swap, because there is nothing left to swap. I open the buy flow instead: bank card, USDT, €200, one confirmation screen.
The one fiat moment, Buenos Aires:
- Fiat (bank card) → USDT · €200 · 3:52 · via SimpleSwap card purchase
Fiat enters once, converts immediately, and does not come back.
The wine shop has a USDT QR taped to its window. In a country where the peso behaves like a mood, this is unremarkable. I pay in USDT directly to a Tether address that was somehow printed in 12-point Comic Sans. The owner says “Bienvenido ” as I leave, even though I have already been there for half an hour.
Dinner is Dandy: vacío with salsa criolla, paid on a gift card. The waiter does not ask which gift card. He has seen worse.
Day 10. Final day.
Día Argentina for alfajores. Six of them, because one is never enough and three feels like an obvious lie to yourself.
Taxi to the airport: same USDT QR setup as on arrival. I do not even take a photo this time.
FlightGift back to Istanbul. The wine bottles travel in checked luggage, wrapped in the Migros travel pillow that started this whole trip in seat 14A, now faintly smelling of dried apricots.
Final numbers
- Total SimpleSwap operations: 14
- Planned pre-country sessions: 2 (Istanbul for Brazil, São Paulo for Chile)
- Spontaneous unplanned swap: 1 (Valparaíso shoes)
- Emergency top-up: 1 (Santiago evening, ADA → USDT)
- Fiat → crypto purchase: 1 (Buenos Aires, €200, 3:52)
- Bitrefill gift cards used: 16
- ActivityGift experiences: 2
- Total spent: ~€3,480
- Average swap time: 2:19
- Direct fiat payments: 0
- Failed swaps: 0
- Sneakers destroyed: 1, replaced mid-cliff
- Wine bottles home: 3
One wallet crossed three countries. The single fiat moment lasted 3 minutes 52 seconds before reverting to crypto.
What this trip was actually like.
A crypto-only trip across Latin America in 2026 does not feel exotic. It feels like ordering a coffee. The friction is in the cash-only metros, cash-only funiculars, and cash-only caipirinha kiosks, not in the swaps. The most honest economic indicator I saw during the entire ten days was a Buenos Aires taxi driver’s sun visor.
Latin America was just the route; the same wallet would have run a trip through Tokyo or Lisbon just the same.
I came home with one pair of unplanned sneakers and a wallet running on fumes. Would do again, probably with a backup pair of shoes.
Images via Rick Cramer/ SimpleSwap.
