Bits and Borders

Andre Franco is the head of research at Mercado Bitcoin and the host of the Francamente Crypto podcast. In this episode we examine how the collapse of FTX impacts Brazil's emerging crypto scene. We look explore the ramifications for retail and institutional investors, prospects for regulation and what it will take to rebuild trust among users. We also explore what this means for the broader crypto market, including decentralized finance as a potential solution to centralized exchange model. 

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Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

Isac is a technologist, lawyer, professor and a frequently-cited commenter on questions of crypto regulation in Brazil. He is also a former CVM staffer and advisor so has a great understanding of how things work inside the agency.

In this episode we discuss:

If you find this conversation useful, I highly recommend listening to my original podcast with Isac from July where we dive deep into the crypto legislation that is working its way through the Brazilian Congress.

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

Marcello Mari is the CEO of SingularityDAO, which is a noncustodial onchain asset management platform that incorporates artificial intelligence tools for decentralized finance.

We discuss how SingularityDAO built off of the success of early-generation projects like SingularityNet and how Brazil has become to SingularityDAO’s most vibrant community. The project’s native token has surged to become the tenth most popular coin in Brazil, per CoinGecko. We also geek out a bit chatting about artificial intelligence and synthetic media, and we speculate about when we will reach the Singularity (the moment when machines become smarter than humans).

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

Garrett Kinsman is the co-founder of Nodle, a decentralized network powered by millions of smartphones built to power the Internet of Things. Nodle's "connect-to-earn" platform allows users to earn NODL tokens simply by downloading and running the Nodle app on a smartphone. I caught up with Garrett at the Blockchain Rio Festival last month to discuss more about this exciting platform and why his team is making a big push to onboard new users in Brazil. 

Learn more about Nodle at www.nodle.com, follow @NodleNetwork and @NodleBR on Twitter, and download the Nodle Cash app in Google Play or the App Store

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

This week I’m trying out a new podcast format in which I bring on a guest to discuss and analyze the biggest crypto news developments in the region. This will be an ongoing experiment as I attempt to cover more crypto news across the Latam beyond Brazil.

This week, my guest is Andres Engler, who is the Latin America Editor at CoinDesk and is based in Argentina. In this week’s episode we talk through the following news events and articles from the last 1-2 weeks. 

Bobby Ong is the COO and co-founder of CoinGecko. Based out of Malaysia, CoinGecko rivals CoinMarketCap for supremacy atop the world of crypto price and data platforms. In this episode we talk about how CoinGecko grew from a side hustle project run from Bobby's bedroom into one of the most popular coin data websites in the world. We also dive into how meme coins and play-to-earn gaming tokens are becoming massive adoption onramps for emerging market economies like Brazil and Malaysia. 

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

Maxim Piessen is the chief technology at Credix, a decentralized credit marketplace that is one of the most intriguing crypto startups to emerge out of Brazil recently and one of just a handful of companies out there that are connecting decentralized finance with real-world assets.

Credix is a Solana-based marketplace that connects institutional investors with fintechs and non-bank loan originators in Latam markets, who are themselves providing loans to small businesses and local borrowers.

Since launching in January, the platform now has 25 investors and 10 fintechs participating, 20 employees and more than US$25 million in total credit issued - with a goal of $100 million by the end of 2022.

Since forming last November, the team recently raised R$50 million (US$11.25 million) in a Series A round announced earlier this month. The round was led by Motive Partners and ParaFi Capital, with Valor Capital, Fuse Capital, Circle Ventures and several others contributing. Please note: we recorded this episode before the round was formally announced.

I highly encourage you to learn more about this project at credix.finance.

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

Renata Rodrigues is global community and education lead at Paxful, which is one of the world's largest peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplaces. The platform recently hit 10 million users globally and is now making a push to bring financial education to users across Brazil and Latin America. We discuss how Paxful's platform operates, how it's providing financial opportunities to under-banked populations and its new partnership with the Guetto Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based non-profit that aims to foster entrepreneurship in the Black community, to provide bitcoin education to underserved communities. 

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem.

Mila Rioja is Latam Lead at Celo Foundation. In this episode we dive into Celo’s mission of using “sacred economics” to create financial prosperity via a mobile-first blockchain and technology stack. We also talk about the state of Celo’s ecosystem in Brazil and Latam - most notably the cREAL stablecoin that was launched earlier this year and has gained significant adoption and liquidity in just six months. We also spend some time focusing on the different types of Celo grants programs available for founders and builders in the region, so make sure to check these out.

Please follow and subscribe to Brazil Crypto Report on Substack for more news, analysis and interviews examining the Brazil crypto ecosystem

Conor Brady heads up Ethereum Brasil, which is supporting the Web3 community in Brazil. In this episode we discuss the upcoming ETH SP event and how he’s using it to support the builder community in Brazil and keep driving momentum after a super successful Ethereum Rio conference last March. The market conditions may be different now and prices may be down, but there’s still a ton of energy in the Brazil market that Conor is trying to convene. Head over to ethereumbrasil.com to learn more.

To learn more about Conor and Ethereum Brasil you can listen to my previous interview with him here.