Business •
Chile's Copper Coders Trade Ore for Software Licenses
By Syed John
Mining crews pay SaaS bills in refined copper, and vendors accept.
A Santiago SaaS company quietly started accepting copper cathodes as payment from mining clients. Why? Because navigating Chile's currency controls is harder than shipping metal. Now coders brag about "ore-backed ARR" during standups.
The barter isn't symbolic. Vendors resell copper futures to hedge funds and record spotless revenue. Miners love it because invoices align with their core commodity. Accountants hate it, but the auditors signed off after someone built a blockchain registry to track the swaps.
This is fintech meets geology, and I can't decide if it's genius or chaos. Either way, software finally smells like copper dust.