Best Bitcoin Card for Brazil
Grupo XP, Brazil’s largest independent broker and owner of XP Investimentos SA, will launch a stock exchange in the coming months that will enable trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to Bloomberg, the new XDEX crypto exchange will employ around 40 people.
Brazil in the direction of Bitcoin
With the aim of helping the Brazilians to invest better and offer the ideal solutions for every investor, Grupo XP currently has 500,000 active customers and over 120 billion in local currency (around 30 billion dollars) in its repertoire. According to reports, Grupo XP plans to control one trillion reals (~245 billion dollars) through its custodian banks by 2020 and create its own bank in the near future. Grupo XP currently offers access to shares, fixed income products, investment funds, real estate funds, futures and other well-known traditional financial products.
Demand for crypto currencies too big to ignore
While this news of a new crypto exchange is huge news, Guilherme Benchimol, CEO of XP Investimentos SA, has said that he personally is not a fan of the crypto market, but the demand is simply too strong to ignore it. Benchimol also mentioned that three million Brazilians “demand” Bitcoin, while “only” around 600,000 invest in shares.
Recent news about XDEX followed a press release from Brazilian regulators that contained a set of rules that allow funds to invest in crypto assets with certain restrictions. Previously, Ilan Goldfajn, Brazil’s central bank chief, described crypto currencies as a kind of snowball system and described the crypto market as a bubble.
In addition, the Board of Directors for Economic Defence began the investigation, inter alia, of Banco Santander Brazil, Banco de Brazil, into a possible cooperation in the closure of the accounts of crypto trading platforms.
Since Grupo XP is clearly making a big step into the crypto trading market with XDEX, we are looking forward to seeing how this project will develop in the coming months.
About Brazil
Brazil (Portuguese Brasil) is the fifth largest country in the world in terms of area and population. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the largest and most populous country in South America, accounting for 47.3 percent of its surface area. Brazil has a common border with every South American country except Chile and Ecuador.
While much of the Atlantic coastal rainforest has already been destroyed and the remains are heavily fragmented, the tropical rainforest of the Amazon region is one of the largest remaining virgin forest areas in the world. But deforestation, slash-and-burn logging and other serious interventions continue at a rapid pace. In terms of the total area of forests, around 0.5% have been lost annually over the past 20 years.
In 2014, 87% of the population lived in cities characterised by rapid growth and wild growth. With over 20 million inhabitants, the city of Sao Paulo is the fifth largest conurbation in the world.
Brazil is the seventh largest economy in the world. The Brazilian economy shows a relatively high degree of diversification. About 69% of the gross value added is generated in the service sector, about 25% in industry and about 6% in agriculture. Brazil is the world’s leading coffee producer and also has large deposits of gold, diamonds, oil and iron ore.