By Hernan Nessi
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A subsidiary of China's Huobi Group, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world, announced on Wednesday a $100 million investment for the creation of a data center in Argentina.
Huobi Argentina's facility, dedicated to blockchain, would be the largest of its kind in the region, the company said.
Blockchain, which first emerged as the system powering the digital currency bitcoin, is a shared database maintained by a network of computers connected to the internet.
Huobi Argentina said in September it planned to establish a local team and a fiat gateway to trade or convert the Argentine peso to cryptocurrency. The company said on Wednesday that transactions with Argentine pesos would be possible by the end of November.
The investment comes as a pervasive economic crisis in Argentina prompted the government to impose stricter currency controls to prop up the rickety peso currency following President-elect Alberto Fernandez's victory over incumbent Mauricio Macri in the October presidential elections.