🇧🇷BCR 40: Coinbase Taps Former Uber Exec for Brazil Country Director Role
The great Brazil exchange race continues to heat up as Coinbase, Bybit, Bit2Me, KuCoin all make big moves. Plus, Ronaldinho will launch his own token
E aí galera,
With comprehensive crypto regulation on the verge of becoming law, the exchange space in Brazil continues to heat up. Coinbase, Bybit, Bit2Me, Kucoin and even Bakkt (anybody remember them?) made moves to beef up their presence in the country.
Please see my post from Saturday to get a better understanding of what the law entails and what comes next. TLDR is that it will provide much-needed “regulatory clarity” for crypto businesses operating in Brazil, but there is a significant risk that it will “kick away the ladder” for startups and new crypto companies looking to operate in Brazil.
This will all depend on how the law is implemented and what types of compliance costs ultimately get passed on to exchanges and their customers. There will be all sorts of political maneuvering involved in this process, so we’ve still got a ways to go.
But the signal that Brazil is getting its act together on crypto is a powerful one. Activity is only going to pick up from here, especially as the other BRIC countries are not simply feasible options for global companies looking to expand internationally at this stage.
I’ll be tracking all of this here at BCR, and I’m glad to have you along for the ride. Feel free to say hi at aaron@brazilcrypto.report or hit me on Telegram at @AaronStanley if you’ve got hot takes in support of or in opposition to this bitcoin bill.
In other news, Lula - the former Brazilian president and possible future president, is saying that he will propose the creation of a new currency for Latin America if he’s elected again. This will be interesting to watch.
Enjoy this week’s news recap.
Boa leitura!
-AWS
🎙Also be sure to check out the most recent BCR podcast with Kim Grauer, director of research at Chainalysis. We chat about some recent analyses she has done looking at cryptocurrency usage and gains across Brazil and the Latam region. The episode can be found on Spotify.
👩💻 Brazil Crypto Jobs Spotlight
The white smoke has risen. Coinbase has officially hired Fabio Tonetto Plein as its Brazil country director. He’s a veteran of Uber, PicPay and Falconi, according to his Linkedin profile. I’ve made an ask to get him as a guest on my podcast, so if anybody knows him well please give him a nudge 😜
Binance has 17 Brazil-specific job postings on its careers page, including Country Director, PR Director, Head of Marketing and more. It’s also looking for a PR Director for North Latam and a Director for South America to be based out of São Paulo (or remote).
💣 Trending Cryptos in Brazil
Here’s a weekly snapshot of trending cryptocurrencies in Brazil as of April 30, 2022, per data provider CoinGecko. Some interesting additions here are Step App and STEPN, indicating that these “movement economy” tokens seem to have appeal in this market.
🗞Brazil Crypto News Rundown
📈 Markets
Hashdex, the Brazilian crypto asset manager, earned approval to list exchange-traded products on the SIX stock exchange in Switzerland, marking the first milestone in the company’s international expansion. (CoinDesk)
Bybit, the Dubai-based crypto exchange, is launching service offerings in Portuguese and establishing a local team in Brazil, marking the start of its Latam expansion.
Users will be able to buy crypto in spot fashion using Pix, and it will offer yield-earning products and an NFT marketplace.
With six million users and US$10bn in custody, Bybit is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world and is a master sponsor of the Red Bull Formula One team for the 2022 season. (CoinDesk) (Livecoins)
Bakkt appears to be planning an expansion into the Brazilian market soon, intellectual property filings discovered by Livecoins.
Spanish exchange Bit2Me will soon begin operations in Brazil and, eventually, the rest of Latam. It has hired Ricardo da Ros as its country manger. da Ros previously helped broker the acquisition of Bitcoin Trade by Ripio, and then had a six month stint as Binance’s Brazil country manager before leaving the company last summer due to a “misalignment of expectations”. Bit2Me CEO Leif Ferreira commented:
"The hiring of Ricardo da Ros shows the importance that Bit2Me gives to the company's international expansion and, in particular, to the Brazilian market, a country with a large crypto community, which has seen Bitcoin as a haven against inflation and a good way to transfer value safely and cheaply." (CoinTelegraph Brasil) (InfoMoney)
Investment icon Luiz Barsi, known as the “Brazilian Warren Buffet”, spoke out again against cryptocurrencies in an interview with Valor Economico, calling them a “fantasy” and that anyone who invests in them will lose money. Investors, he argued, should instead “focus on dividends”. (Livecoins) (Portal do Bitcoin)
Mercado Bitcoin listed seven new assets to its platform, including Aavegotchi (GHST), SuperRare (RARE), LooksRare (LOOKS), Maple (MPL), Storj (STORJ) and more. (Portal do Bitcoin)
Mercado Bitcoin and investment advisor EQI Investments are teaming up to create a new entity to offer 140 crypto assets to EQI’s base of 55,000 qualified investors. EQI currently holds R14.5bn (US$2.9bn) in assets under custody. (Portal do Bitcoin) (Valor Investe)
Kucoin, a global crypto exchange headquartered in Seychelles, has enabled BRL deposits and withdrawals in Brazil, via Pix, through a partnership with Capitual. (CriptoFacil)
ApeCoin is now officially available for purchase via ETF in Brazil, via its inclusion in NFTS11 product from asset manager Investo. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
The pre-order period for Hashdex’s META11 ETF will begin on May 9. The product will offer exposure to top metaverse and blockchain entertainment tokens like Audius. It will be the company’s sixth crypto ETF available for trading in Brazil. (Valor Investe)
Hashdex commemorated one year since the launch of its HASH11 ETF on the B3 exchange last April with a 500% increase in total investors (30,000 to 150,000). (InfoMoney)
📱Adoption
Real-time payments in Brazil are forecasted to contribute 2.08% of GDP by 2026, per a new report from ACI Worldwide, a consultancy, which called Brazil a “real-time payments success story”.
Per the report, Brazil recorded 8.7 billion real-time transactions in 2021, mainly due to the growing popularity of Pix.
These resulted in an estimated cost savings of US$5.7bn for businesses and consumers and US$5.5bn of unlocked economic output.
By 2026, 82.4 billion real-time payments are expected, which will generate US$37.6bn in economic output, equivalent to 2.08% of projected gross domestic product for that year.
After seeing significant success in their home country, Argentine crypto payments startup Lemon Cash plans to commence operations in Brazil in June with a Visa card that allows both crypto and fiat payments, exchange between cryptos and bitcoin cashback. The goal is to onboard 200,000 - 300,000 Brazilian in three months and to grow its Brazil-based team from four to 60 by year’s end. (BlockNews)
The Banco Central’s LIFT Laboratory is accepting applications for a free online course on DeFi. (Portal do Bitcoin)
53% of Brazilian investors see crypto as a reliable source of value, according to a new survey of 1,500 individuals commissioned by Kucoin. The survey also suggests that 34.5 million Brazilians have invested in crypto in the last six months (that number feels very high). Additionally, 64% of Brazilian crypto investors are looking to increase their investments and 62% of investors see crypto as the “future of finance”. 53% consider crypto to be a reliable store of value. The findings are published in the Brazil edition of Kucoin’s Into the Cryptoverse report. (CoinTimes)
Grupo Primo, owned by Brazilian investor and YouTube influencer Thiago Nigro - aka “Primo Rico”, acquired an equity stake in crypto analytics platform Paradigma Research. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Brazilian football legend Ronaldinho Gaúcho is launching his own token $RON through a partnership with social token platform P00LS. He commented:
“My fans are at the heart of my success on and off the field. Over the past two decades, they've followed my journey through the countries I've had the opportunity to play and visit. More than fans, they are my community. That's why I'm incredibly excited to launch my token with P00LS”. (CriptoFacil)
Kraken Holding, one of the entities behind the USDSports cryptocurrency, announced the purchase of the Ipatinga Football Club, one of the better known teams in Minas Gerais that has since fallen on hard times. The team will be eventually managed as an Ethereum-based DAO and renamed as USDSports Ipatinga. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Bitso is partnering Moss, the tokenized carbon credit platform, to offset the carbon footprint of all bitcoin, ethereum and ERC-20 tokens traded on its platform. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
A 49 year-old day laborer in Porto Alegre without credit was able to finance a R$129,000 house through property tokenization via NFT. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
A group of Brazilians have launched a board game called Cryptonaire Quest that seeks to educate players about bitcoin and crypto concepts. (Livecoins)
Rio de Janeiro startup Wisemade has create the country’s first “crypto workspace”, a co-work area modeled after so-called “Google Workspaces”. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
👏NFTFY, a Brazilian team, won first place in the ETHAmsterdam hackathon
🎮 NFTs, Gaming and Metaverse
LOUD, one of the largest gaming organizations in Brazil, has raised R$50 (US$10m) with intentions of investing in the blockchain gaming space in Latam. Investors include Animoca, Formless Capital, Mechanism Capital, Jump Capital and others. (Forbes Brasil)
A samba school participating in Rio’s Carnaval is continuing the party in the metaverse where it will unveil its “Mulheres do Samba” NFT series, designed by Moeda Seeds and All.be.Tuned. (CriptoFacil)
Brazilian fashion brand Melissa is launching a collection of NFTs on Polygon via a partnership with OnePercent. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
A new NFT marketplace called NFTexperience has launched operations in Brazil. It allows users to purchase around 250,000 NFTs with BNB, and is offering a variety of chique promotions and incentives such as a 10 day trip to Dubai to gain new users. (Portal do Bitcoin)
Ribon, a socialtech platform that gamifies donations, completed a US$3.5m post-seed round led by Valor Capital Group. It recently pivoted its business strategy to a decentralized, blockchain-based model. (BlockNews)
The mayor of Maceió, in the state of Alagoas, signed a bill authorizing the city to issue NFTs as a means of generating income for the city. João Henrique Caldas, the mayor, stated:
“The idea of the project is to put Maceió on the technological map once and for all, allowing the creation of digital assets that can be auctioned, generating resources for investment in purposes of public interest. With this, Maceió will, once again, adopt a vanguard posture and stand out among Brazilian capitals as disruptors”. (Livecoins)
🏛 Public Policy, Regulation and Enforcement
Crypto exchange Ripio has re-joined ABCripto, a trade group representing 10 major crypto businesses in Brazil. Ripio was previously a member until March 2021 and is now re-joining the group. (CriptoFacil)
An investment scheme involving a robot promising AI-generated returns via Pix and cryptocurrency investing was exposed by a YouTuber as an apparent scam. (Livecoins)
A job posting for a judge role in the state of Maranhão requires knowledge of cryptocurrencies. (Livecoins)
The Superior Electoral Court will pay R$3,299 for an employee to take a blockchain engineering course, as the country prepares for federal and state level elections later this year. (Portal do Bitcoin)
Civil police in São Paulo arrested a man who was demanding payment in cryptocurrencies in a blackmail operation against Banco Pan. (Livecoins)
The Administrative Council for Economic Defense has postponed a hearing in a case investigating alleged unfair practices by banks against crypto businesses in Brazil. (Livecoins)
A judge in Mato Grosso ruled that Nubank rightfully closed a cryptocurrency peer-to-peer broker’s account in 2021. (Livecoins)
Thiago de Paulo Reis, a supposed accomplice of Glaidson Acacio dos Santos of GAS Consultoria, was ordered by the Superior Tribunal de Justiça to remain imprisoned over his suspected role in laundering GAS investor funds and ordering executions of GAS competitors. (Livecoins)
The STJ also denied a request to reduce the prison sentence of Fernando Ewerton Cesar da Silva, one of the architects of the Kriptacoin pyramid scheme, which promised 1% returns per day and defrauded 40,000 investors out of R$250m (US$50m). (Portal do Bitcoin)