In August, a record number of Brazilian businesses and organizations publicly acknowledged they held cryptocurrency. The figures, published by the Brazilian Tax Authority (RFB), demonstrate a rising institutional interest in buying cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, Tether, and Brazil
More than 12,000 Brazilian businesses have acknowledged holding cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets, according to data published by the Brazilian Tax Authority. This is up from July’s total of 11,360 declaring companies.
But during the same month, there was a 35,000 drop in the number of individuals who reported owning cryptocurrency. However, the number is still rather significant, with over 1.3 million people registering, and adoption rates remain quite high.
The data comes from the RFB’s mandatory monthly report on cryptocurrency holdings, indicating the market trend. The RFB regularly updates the market on changes in the number of mandatory declarations of cryptocurrency ownership, providing a window into the industry’s development and future course.
Tether’s USDT dollar-pegged stablecoin is one of the most widely utilized tokens in the country. In August, USDT was used in more than $1.4 billion worth of transactions, with an average transaction value of about $18,000.
Bitcoin, however, outpaced USDT in terms of total transactions within the same time frame. More than $2.1 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) exchanged hands in August. Yet the sums involved were far smaller, averaging out to about $130 for each transaction.
Similarly, large movements were seen in ETH and USDC, another dollar-linked stablecoin, as well as BRZ, the first cryptocurrency pegged to the Brazilian real.
Growing Institutional Interest
These figures demonstrate that the nation’s cryptocurrency industry is expanding rapidly, as the Brazilian Tax Authority also documented a record number of individual cryptocurrency ownership declarations in July. As a result, various financial technology firms like Picpay and Nubank, as well as more traditional banks like Santander, have declared their plans to offer cryptocurrency services in the nation.
