#135: Michael Saylor promotes bitcoin on "secret trip" to Brazil
Plus: Elon vs Alexandre de Morães memecoins; Receita Federal to launch consultation on crypto taxes
Olá pessoal!
Welcome back to 🇧🇷Brazil Crypto Report for the week of April 8-12, 2024.
I hope to see many of you at Web Summit Rio this week! I will be moderating a session with Animoca Brands CEO Yat Siu on Tuesday, and hosting a panel on metaverse and Web3 on Thursday. I am also helping the Transfero team program some crypto content in their stand, so will be hosting some sessions there as well as hanging around generally.
I will also be spending a bit of time at the Banco BV and Itaú stands, both of which will be doing some panels on crypto and Drex.
Feel free to hit me up on Linkedin or @AaronStanley on Telegram if you’ll be around.
🔍What else is in this week’s BCR?
ex-PayPal CEO Schulman joins Valor Capital Group
Receita Federal to launch public consultation on crypto taxes
Transfero and Fuse Capital team up on new venture
Binance’s Guilherme Nazar talks to CoinTelegraph Brasil
Elon Musk vs Alexandre de Morães memecoins
Have a great week everyone!
-AWS
💡Questions? Comments? Feedback? Feel free to respond to this email or ping me on Linkedin, and please remember to give 🇧🇷Brazil Crypto Report a follow on X/Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram
🎙New podcast!
Modular Crypto co-founder João Kury joins the show this week to talk about his experiences building Web3 communities in Brazil, Modular Crypto’s work creating educational Portuguese language crypto content, and the state of the modular vs. monolithic blockchain rivalry.
🎧 You can find Brazil Crypto Report content wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon | Anchor | YouTube
Michael Saylor makes secret visit; praises bitcoin adoption by Brazilian banks
Bitcoin evangelist extraordinaire Michael Saylor paid a visit to Faria Lima and Brazil’s bitcoin community last week, including a meeting with Central Bank president Roberto Campos Neto.
In his first ever trip to Brazil, he gave a private bitcoin lesson to Itaú clients and participated in some other small events. He gave an interview to Valor’s Toni Sciarretta at the BLP Crypto office in which he lauded Brazilian banks for leaning into bitcoin:
'“Brazil has been very innovative. The adoption of digital assets by Brazilian banks has been, I believe, one of the most enthusiastic and sophisticated in the world.”
At the Itaú event, Saylor reinforced why he believes bitcoin is a unique digital property and an asset without parallel, both inside and outside of the world of cryptocurrencies, and a no-brainer investment:
“I think Bitcoin has a clear path to multiplying its current value by 100. Because we now have certainty, and regulatory clarity, across the world on two fundamental issues. Bitcoin is a commodity, an asset without an issuer, and its use case is as property. And property is a store of value worth $100 trillion.”
He also fielded numerous questions from the audience about energy consumption, the bitcoin Layer 2 ecosystem and the volatile nature of the asset:
“You have to embrace volatility,” he explained. “So most assets are either impaired capital or toxic or defective capital. Bitcoin is perfect capital, perfectly constructed. Volatility is an artifact of being an open, permissionless network that anyone can buy into.”
Saylor also emphasized that he sees lots of uncertainty still around non-bitcoin applications of blockchain tech, pointing to a likely SEC lawsuit against Uniswap. He went so far as to recommend that investors figure out ways to borrow money cheaply to buy more bitcoin as MicroStrategy has done the last several years.
Journalist Leonardo Rubinstein of BlockTrends was onsite at the event (and obviously quite excited about it per his tweet below)
Ex-PayPal CEO Schulman joins Valor Capital
Former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman has joined Valor Capital as a managing partner based in Silicon Valley. Founding partner Scott Sobel said in a blog post:
Joined by incredible leadership like Dan, we are doubling down on our mission to be the bridge across LatAm and global tech markets to fully unlock the potential of the Americas tech ecosystem.
Receita Federal to launch public consultation on crypto taxation
Brazil’s tax authority will open a public consultation this year to improve Normative Instruction 1888/2019, the rule by which the body captures information about Brazilians’ cryptoasset transactions.
The RF is looking to update the rule to align with the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework, released by the OECD in 2022, that seeks to implement a “new model for exchanging information on crypto assets” across jurisdictions.
The agency’s 2023-2024 Annual Inspection Report, released April 5, stated:
“Brazil will be one of the countries to be part of this cryptoasset exchange network, in addition to the financial information already exchanged multilaterally with other international bodies in the search for transparency.”
Valor Portal do Bitcoin BlockNews Exame CoinTelegraph Brasil
Transfero and Fuse Capital team up on BRX joint venture
BRX, the new venture, will find creative ways to deploy traditional finance concepts like credit and shares into the decentralized market, with the core objective of creating new blockchain projects and use cases.
Why are Transfero and Fuse teaming up for this project? Fuse Capital founding partner João Zecchin explained:
"It is only possible to make these products through the merger of two companies that operate in different worlds. Transfero is more native to the blockchain world, understands the potential of this infrastructure in operational efficiencies, and there is Fuse, which is a more traditional manager, with partners in the financial market, who understand traditional products."
The venture will begin with two of Fuse’s existing projects with a vision of branching into the Drex tokenization environment.
Transfero Ventures CEO Claudio Just explained:
"Drex will not be a stablecoin, it is more of a larger protocol, a layer, and the Transfero is on the top layer, needing to have a bridge between the two. BRZ [the company's stablecoin] seeks to provide liquidity to the Brazilian real outside the country and ended up becoming a specific token for tokenization. I believe in a co-existence.”
Shocker: Elon vs Xandão memecoin surges 250% after launch
$ELONxALEXANDRE, a new memecoin commemorating the fight between Elon Musk and Alexandre de Moraes over censorship, has launched and is available for trading on PancakeSwap. The project roadmap says that an NFT collection will soon be launched as well.
Not at all investment advice, but you can see the project website and join the official Telegram group here.
Nazar reinforces Binance’s commitment to Brazil
Guilherme Nazar, Binance’s Director General for Brazil, gave a rare interview to CoinTelegraph to discuss the state of the market, the upcoming bitcoin halving and the exchange’s current positioning in the Brazil market:
"We are very pleased with the growth we are seeing in Brazil. We will continue to invest significant resources in the region and support our Brazilian users.”
“In Brazil, we are advancing in the regulatory scenario, which is crucial for institutional investors. This brings legitimacy to the industry and stakeholders, including cryptocurrency exchanges. It is a positive step towards attracting even more institutional investors.”
🗞Brazil Crypto News Rundown
📈 Markets
Cryptocurrencies have surpassed bank deposit certificates as the most sought after products by Brazilian investors, according to research firm Yubb. CEO Bernardo Pascowitch told Estadao:
It’s normal in every boom cycle. People start to follow when the historic record is broken. In March, this was reflected in the search for cryptos.” (Valor Investe) (Portal do Bitcoin)
PeerBR is launching its first tokenized Real Estate Receivables Certificate (CRI), worth R$7 million (US$1.4 million).
The funds will be used for the construction of a condominium in Guararema, SP.
PeerBR is the tokenization and alternative investment arm of GCB Group
The CRI will pay 7& per year and will be targeted to high-income investors, though it will not be closed to retail investors.
CEO Marcos Barros commented that the project positions PeerBR as a specialized private credit platform:
“It’s an interesting niche from the point of view of market space. Recently, some changes have strengthened this thesis, mainly the changes in the rules for incentivized investments and the drop in interest rates, with the difficulty in finding more interesting investments.” (Valor) (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Former FTX clients in Brazil are hopeful, but uncertain, about getting their money back via the bankruptcy process. (Portal do Bitcoin)
Nubank will integrate all of its investment services in its app, meaning customers will be able to trade crypto funds and ETFs direct. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Cryptocurrency imports into Brazil totaled US$2.9 billion in the first two months of 2024, a 110% increase over the prior year period, the Central Bank revealed. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Crypto index funds on the B3 exchange moved R$3.4 billion (US$664 million) in the first three months of 2024, but generally performed worse than bitcoin during that period. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Netspaces intends to sell licenses to tokenize properties in 100 Brazilian cities in 2024. These licenses will be intended for developers, real estate agencies and others looking to sell houses and apartments to to customers. (Valor) (Exame) (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Brazilians invested nearly US$10 million into crypto investment funds during the first week of April, according to data from CoinShares. (CoinTelegraph Brasil) (Portal do Bitcoin)
Brazilian fintech Delend received an investment of R$100 million (US$20 million) and acquired part of Rede OK for R$80 million to boost its credit offerings for SME customers. (Startupi) (Web3News)
Mercado Bitcoin closed a R$29 million tokenization operation of an investment vehicle called Escala, issued by the Santa Catarina fintech Asaas. (Portal do Bitcoin)
📲 Adoption
Several of Brazil’s biggest football clubs, including Flamengo, Palmeiras, Fluminense, Vasco da Gama and São Paulo, will give away NFTs via a new partnership called “Proof-of-Passion” with Chiliz. Bruno Pessoa, country manager for Chiliz and Socios.com, said in a statement:
“The Proof-of-Passion campaign is an example of how web3 technology can revolutionize fan interaction with their favorite teams. Football fans have always enjoyed collecting items from their favorite team, but it has always been very difficult for clubs to measure this engagement.” (Portal do Bitcoin) (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Avalanche sees Brazil as an important market and is expanding its ambassador program locally. At a meetup event in Floripa co-hosted with Notus.Labs, Andrea Vargas, developer relations at Ava Labs, explained:
"One of the main efforts we are making in the region is local ambassadors. We have a lot of ambassadors and we want to expand further. We don't want to start expanding to different regions in a disorganized way. Personally, I see Brazil as a very important country in the blockchain space, especially due to the various initiatives that come from the institutions
So, yes, Brazil and Latin America are an integral part of our plans. We are ready to do solid work in Latin America.” (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Brazilian NFT project CryptoRastas launched a reggae-inspired memecoin on Solana. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
🏛 Policy, Regulation and Enforcement
The Finance and Taxation Committee of the Chamber of Deputies will host a hearing on crypto asset segregation, following a request from Deputy Aureo Ribeiro. The hearing will feature witnesses from the Central Bank, CVM, Febraban, ABFintechs, ABCripto and more. A date for the hearing has yet to be determined. Ribeiro said in a statement:
“Our conclusion is that, to increase the protection of investors in crypto assets and reduce the risk that operations with such assets are used irregularly, for example, with the intention of money laundering or illegal remittance of resources abroad, it is essential improve the legislation applicable to the sector.” (Portal do Bitcoin) (Exame) (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
In the Senate, a bill that would make Drex Brazil’s official digital currency advanced has advanced and will be debated in a public hearing. Senator Carlos Portinho, the rapporteur for the bill, said in a statement:
“The project represents a significant technological and regulatory innovation with the potential to introduce substantial changes in the functioning of the payment system and the credit market in the national territory. According to information from the Central Bank of Brazil, the implementation of this measure could lead to significant gains in efficiency, with promising prospects for reducing credit costs for consumers.” (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Brazil is well-positioned to “reap the fruits” of its pioneering regulatory approach to crypto assets, Ripple’s Latam public policy leader Priscila Couto argues.
“We are taking a lead within Latin America. There are other countries that have already regulated, like Chile, but not in the structured way like here." (Exame)
Rio de Janeiro police are investigating a group accused of stealing R$30 million (US$6 million) via a cryptocurrency pyramid. (Portal do Bitcoin)
“Pharaoh of Bitcoins” Glaidson Acacio dos Santos has reportedly become a mentor to Comando Vermelho leader Marcinho VP and his associates in prison, where he has taught them how to use cryptocurrencies. Flavia Froes, an attorney for the gang members, explained:
“It's great that Glaidson, having been placed with these people, was able to pass on financial education knowledge. Books about cryptoassets undergo prior censorship. In other words, if they entered, it is because this literature was not seen as subversive and did not undermine public order.” (Metropoles)
The Central Bank of Brazil stated that it has no intention to add bitcoin to the nation’s reserves. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Federal Police arrested “Vandathegod”, a hacker accused of orchestrating the largest-ever data leak in Brazil, with the information of 223 million individuals being exposed. He sold this information on the internet in exchange for cryptocurrencies. (Portal do Bitcoin)
A Brazilian woman was arrested by Civil Police for stealing R$115,000 from victims via a crypto pyramid scheme in Caldas Novas, Goias. (Portal do Bitcoin)
The CVM earned R$832 million (US$162 million) from fines applied in 2023. (Portal do Bitcoin)
Atletico Mineiro footballer Gustavo Scarpa is calling for his case against Santos player Willian Bigode over an alleged cryptocurrency scam to be expedited:
“It could be resolved, it’s past time. It’s a very simple case, Willian’s responsibility is clear in the process…I had to come to Brazil to prove everything that happened, with audios and prints. It's clear in the process. I hope justice speeds up. I want to get this money back, hopefully it works out.” (Portal do Bitcoin)