Colombia’s president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella won the second round of the presidential election on Sunday, defeating Iván Cepeda and shifting the country to the right after Gustavo Petro’s term. The criminal lawyer and media personality, backed by conservative Defensores de la Patria, campaigned on a platform that includes a sweeping blockchain proposal called ‘Blockchain 2030’ — a plan to record every public contract on a nationwide, traceable, and auditable blockchain system. The win also marks the highest first-round vote total in Colombian history, with 10.3 million ballots cast for de la Espriella in May.
What ‘Blockchain 2030’ actually does
De la Espriella’s program combines blockchain with artificial intelligence to overhaul Colombia’s tax agency (DIAN), improve identification systems, tighten public security, and shrink the state apparatus. The core idea: every government contract — from road construction to social programs — gets logged on a distributed ledger that citizens can audit in real time. It’s a transparency play aimed at a country where corruption has long eroded trust in public institutions. Whether the plan survives legislative battles is an open question; de la Espriella’s coalition doesn’t hold a majority in Congress.
No Bitcoin, but plenty of stablecoins
Importantly, de la Espriella’s victory does not mean Colombia will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender or create a state BTC reserve. The country’s crypto adoption rate sits at 20.2%, according to the facts — and more than half of all crypto purchases by Colombians end up in stablecoins. That trend, often called ‘digital dollarization’, reflects a population that uses crypto as a hedge against inflation and a cheaper way to send remittances. Colombia received $13.09 billion in remittances in 2025, up 10.6% from the prior year, with many of those funds flowing through stablecoins rather than traditional money-transfer services.
International alignment
De la Espriella aligns himself with Donald Trump, Nayib Bukele, and Daniel Noboa, and has been sharply critical of Venezuela’s ruling regime. Trump celebrated the win on Truth Social. The new president’s blockchain push is unlikely to face resistance from that camp; Bukele’s El Salvador is the only country to make Bitcoin legal tender, but de la Espriella has been clear he won’t go that route. Still, the ‘Blockchain 2030’ proposal puts Colombia in a group of Latin American nations experimenting with government-led distributed-ledger projects — a far cry from the full crypto-state model but a notable step for a country that ranks among the region’s top adopters.
What comes next
De la Espriella takes office in August. His first test will be getting the blockchain legislation through a divided Congress. The DIAN overhaul and the public-contract registry are the two pieces most likely to move first, given they don’t require new constitutional amendments. For the crypto industry inside Colombia, the policy direction is clear: stablecoins and infrastructure projects will get a friendly ear, but don’t expect a national Bitcoin reserve anytime soon.
