Brazilian companies turned to stablecoins on election day to dodge a currency crash USDT volume on crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin jumped nearly 800% and bitcoin volume surged 865%.
Binance’s USDT/BRL market tripled while the global BTC/USDT pair fell. – Corporate accounts drove 78% of Mercado Bitcoin’s election-day volume as companies sought to hedge currency risk while traditional markets were shut, the exchange said. – USDT volume on Mercado Bitcoin jumped nearly 800% and bitcoin volume surged 865% from the previous Sunday. – The Ibovespa fell 14% Monday, its worst day since 2020, after incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat Flávio Bolsonaro, whom prediction markets had priced as a roughly 80% favorite
Brazilian companies entered a crypto trading frenzy on Sunday to protect their treasuries from the outcome of an election that saw incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, unexpectedly beat Flávio Bolsonaro. Corporate accounts generated 78% of trading on crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin, with turnover in Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDT, jumping nearly 800% from the week before and more than triple the average of the four preceding Sundays. Trading in bitcoin Lula’s platform of increased social spending and a ban on online betting that would reduce tax income sparked concerns the country’s finances would suffer if he won, adding to pressure on the real and keeping borrowing costs high.
Rising debt, new spending commitments and limited scope for tax increases would make that task harder. “For investors, this reinforces the logic of not relying only on the real,” Pedro Fontes, a research analyst at Mercado Bitcoin, wrote in an analysis shared with CoinDesk. “In this scenario of higher exchange rate pressure, stablecoins, such as USDT and USDC, are a simple way to dollarize part of your assets, at any time and starting from low amounts.” Stronger opposition in Congress could complicate efforts to address fiscal problems, reinforcing the…