Over 12K Brazil companies declare record crypto holdings
The number of companies holding cryptocurrency in Brazil has reached new record highs as of August due to increased confidence in cryptocurrencies and high inflation rates.
According to local media reports, the country’s tax authority, the Receita Federal do Brasil (RFB) – also known as Brazil’s Federal Revenue – registered 12,053 unique organizations that declared crypto on their balance sheets in August 2022.
The figure is a 6.1% increase from the 11,360 companies in July and is the month with the highest recorded number of companies with crypto holdings to date.
The RFB noted that Bitcoin (BTC) is the most popular cryptocurrency held by institutions, followed by stablecoin Tether (USDT).
However, the number of individual Brazilian investors holding crypto fell from last month to 1.3 million in August.
The value of total declarations also saw a slight decline, likely due to the state of the crypto markets, with August totaling $2.1 billion (11 billion Brazilian reais), down from $3.4 billion in July.
The US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT had the most transaction value, with over $1.42 billion moved over nearly 80,000 transactions in August, averaging about $17,500 per transaction.
BTC came in second with nearly $270 million in transactions, but took the top spot for number of transactions, clocking in over 2.1 million in the same month at a much lower average transaction amount of $130.
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It was noticed that stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) fell from third to fifth place from July to August in terms of transaction value, losing to Ether (ETH) and Brazilian Digital Token (BRZ), a Brazilian real-linked ERC-20 -token. .
Brazilians’ confidence in cryptocurrency remains high according to a September Bitstamp “Crypto Pulse” report, with 77% stating they trust digital assets.
Several financial companies in the country have started offering cryptocurrency services, such as brokerage giant XP Inc. and payment application PicPay, which both integrated cryptocurrency exchange services in August. Crypto exchange Binance has also increased its efforts in the country, doubling its team since March and opening two new offices on October 4.
Brazil’s inflation rate hit a 26-year high of 12.1% in April, but has since cooled slightly to 8.7% in the latest August figures, according to data from the country’s statistics agency.
