Bits and Borders

Nicky Dyskant is one of the top fintech and capital markets lawyers in Brazil. In this conversation we discuss her role as an advisor to several key crypto companies operating in the country - including Fireblocks, 2TM, Vórtx QR Tokenizadora and Hashdex. We dive into her purview on Drex (formerly Digital Real), the crypto regulatory framework currently being developed by the Brazilian Central Bank...

Leandro Pereira is head of growth for Latam at Paysafe and a 10 year veteran of the Brazil crypto scene. We discuss Leandro’s trajectory in the ecosystem and Paysafe's payments infrastructure in the region, which includes a digital wallet, debit and credit card products and APIs for connecting alternative payment methods. Paysafe's crypto payments stack also provides fiat on and off-ramp s...

Rai Auad is one of the top independent Web3 educators and content creators in Brazil. In this episode we talk about how Rai got her start in crypto via Axie Infinity and other crypto games in 2021 before quitting her job at Itaú to become a full-time content creator in the space. We discuss how she engages her audience across different platforms and channels, as well as the ups and downs of being...

Gean Chu is a partner at Honey Island Capital, a Curitiba-based venture firm founded by veterans of Ebanx. In this conversation we discuss Honey Island's fintech investment theses and Gean's new Web3 fund focused on liquid tokens and on-chain strategies like staking, farming and liquidity provision You can connect with Gean on Linkedin and Twitter Connect with Brazil Crypto Report across t...

It's been a rough few months for the crypto custody world. Ledger sparked a backlash with a controversial key recovery proposal, regulated custodian Prime Trust was put into receivership by the state of Nevada following allegations it misused customer funds, and Nasdaq backed away from plans to launch its own crypto custody service. Composecure CPO Adam Lowe joins the show to discuss the crypt...

This week’s podcast is a recording of a panel I hosted with Thales Freitas of Bitso , AB InBev’s Daniel Tartaro and fintech expert Bruno Diniz at Digital Finance Brasil last month at the University of São Paulo. The panel explored how the respective worlds of crypto and fintech in Brazil are quickly converging, be it through Bitso’s efforts to bridge traditional finance with DeFi and CeFi, AB InBe...

Renan Kruger is a digital asset specialist at Santander Brasil, one of Brazil's largest banks and one that is actively involved in the country's budding digital asset space. This episode was recorded live at Digital Finance Brasil on June 22 at the University of São Paulo. We discuss: how Santander Brasil is studying the digital asset market and regulatory ecosystem in the country the bank...

Rodrix Digital is one of Brazil’s original crypto influencers and content creators having first started his YouTube brand back in 2017. He now provides education and content on various platforms, including YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok, and has expanded his services to include consulting, marketing, and PR for businesses entering the Brazilian market. Today, his Bitcoin Block YouTube channel has p...

For this episode I am joined by Cryptum CEO André Salem to discuss illuminating new research exploring crypto adoption and sentiment in Brazil that him and his team have produced. Cryptum is a Brazil-based blockchain-as-a-service stack that provides tools for developers and companies looking to build blockchain and Web3 applications. André and his team recently commissioned an extensive survey of...

Like it or not, the US is still the most important crypto market in the world, and if you’re a professional operating in this industry you need to be paying serious attention to what’s happening there. So to help you do that, Antonio and I invited two experts from the US to help us synthesize what’s going on with these SEC lawsuits and understand how observers in markets like Brazil should be inte...

I had the chance to catch up with Guilherme Santana at Consensus 2023 in Austin. Guilherme is an engineer, biotech entrepreneur, crypto OG and the founder of Preservaland, which is a project that uses NFTs to incentivize landowners to protect their holdings from deforestation. We talk about how the Preservaland team identifies land in Brazil that is considered “preservable” and then pay the landow...

Nesse podcast gravado live no Criptorama Brasilia dia 7 de Junho, eu converso com Juliana Walenkamp do BitGo sobre a importância do custôdia na questão do regulaçåo do criptomoedas Juliana Walenkamp é chefe de vendas institucionais da Latam na BitGo no Brasil e passou um tempo representando outros nomes familiares da Web3 como Ripple, Gemini e Transfero na região. Nesta conversa, mergulhamos na ev...

Jonathan Levin is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Chainalysis, a leading blockchain data and analytics company valued at US$8.6 billion in its most recent funding round. I had the chance to sit down with Jonathan this week at the Criptorama conference in Brasilia, hosted by ABCripto and Fenasbac. We met up in the lobby of the famous Royal Tulip Hotel to chat about how blockchain data serv...

For this episode I'm joined by Alex Nascimento, who is a professor at UCLA in the US and a partner at 7 Visions Digital, a São Paulo-based venture fund focused on tokenizing Real World Assets such as debt, precatories and environmental assets. He’s also the author of The STO Financial Revolution: How Security Tokens Change Businesses Forever. I was also joined by Antonio Neto as a guest co-hos...

For this most recent podcast I had the chance to sit down with Jorge Souto and Paulo Boghosian who run the TC Cripto program at Traders Club. Traders Club is a premium community that provides education, tools and research for primarily sophisticated traders across equities, derivatives and commodities. Paulo and Jorge are both career TradFi professionals who pivoted into crypto in the mid-2010s. I...

Andre Portilho is head of digital assets at BTG Pactual, which is one of the largest banks in Brazil and the largest investment bank in Latin America. He previously ran the options desk at BTG when bitcoin came onto his radar in 2017. Since then, BTG has been a leader among financial institutions globally in embracing and utilizing blockchain technology as well as offering crypto products to its c...

Leo Schwartz is a crypto reporter at Fortune covering focusing on policy and regulation. Leo has prior experience covering technology in Spanish-speaking Latin America, but he recently made his first trip to Brazil to host several crypto panels at Web Summit Rio and meet several of the key players from the local industry. In this episode, we talk about how the conference opened his eyes to Brazil&...

Hashdex has established itself as a global pioneer in crypto asset management since being founded in 2018. It is also one of the crown jewels of Brazil’s crypto ecosystem, with more than US$400 million in AUM. But the firm’s vision expands far beyond just Brazil and Latam. For this latest podcast I spoke with Bruno Ramos de Sousa , Partner and Head of US and Europe, about Hashdex’s rise to promine...

News broke last week that the CVM, the Brazilian SEC, referred Binance to federal prosecutors for allegedly offering crypto derivatives products to Brazilian customers in defiance of a cease and desist order. Further reporting this week has revealed that the CVM’s inquiry began in June 2022 after a Binance customer service representative told a Portal do Bitcoin reporter, posing as a trader, that...

Please follow and subscribe to  Brazil Crypto Report  on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.   In today’s episode I talk with Jorge Borges who heads up Fireblocks’ sales operations for Brazil and Latin America. We talk about Jorge’s background in finance and tech before jumping into crypto and digital assets. Fireblocks provides blockchain infrast...

Rony Szuster covers Ethereum and smart contract platforms for Mercado Bitcoin’s research team. He was kind enough to join the podcast to help us understand these critical updates, the impacts they may have on the market and how they fit into the broader Ethereum roadmap. In this episode we cover: the difference between Ethereum’s Consensus Layer and Execution Layer, and how the two chains communic...

Nearly two years after first entering the Brazil market, Bitso Brasil received its payment institution license last week from the Brazilian Central Bank. The license will enable the exchange to offer a new array of financial products and services in the market. I took the occasion to catch up with Bitso CEO Daniel Vogel and Thales de Freitas, CEO of Bitso Brasil, to discuss the new license as well...

Juliana Walenkamp is the head of institutional sales for Latam at BitGo in Brazil and has spent time representing other Web3 household names like Ripple, Gemini and Transfero in the region. In this conversation we dive into the evolution of BitGo as a company since first offering basic multi-sig products in 2013 to becoming a full-fledged qualified custodian that offers a plethora of other product...

For today’s episode I brought in one of the Brazil’s top crypto journalists and one of the its leading Web3 investors to discuss the potential impacts of this technology on Brazil’s economy. Both are friends and previous guests of the show João Zecchin is a co-founder of Fuse Capital, which is one of Brazil’s first Web3 native venture capital firms. You can listen to my previous episode with him h...

Mauricio Magaldi of Blockchain Insider joins to discuss his predictions for the Brazil crypto ecosystem in 2023. We touch on the Brazil regulatory angle, technology adoption and the growth of asset tokenization projects in the country.    You can follow Mauricio and Blockchain Insider on Spotify   Also be sure to check out his Portuguese language podcast BlockDrops   Please fol...