The launch of the BRZ, the main cryptocurrency pegged to the Brazilian real, was very well received by the market, evaluates the CEO of Transfero Swiss, Thiago Cesar, in an interview with PanoramaCrypto. The Bittrex listing, one of the largest exchanges in the world, took the currency to another level. “The Brazilian exchanges began to consider the project more seriously and the media has also covered it well”, he says. In the interview, Cesar also talks about transparency, acquired knowledge and perspectives for the future.
Thiago César, from Transfero: Transparency and pipeline auditing.
Read the main excerpts:
It’s been a few months since BRZ was listed. What’s the assessment you’ve been doing so far?
The BRZ won another status after listing at Bittrex. Both for the market as with the crypto users in Brazil. The Brazilian exchanges began to consider the project more seriously, the media had also given good coverage.
Foreign brokers have also shown more interest, because the Bittrex is a benchmark in the bitcoin market. So BRZ gave a very large qualitative leap after this listing. In these two months of BRZ, we can say that for now it has been a success.
It is not yet being adopted in mass by a matter of listing at the Brazilian brokers, but we already have organic users who are operating the BRZ in foreign exchanges.
What can you say about the acquired knowledge so far in the process?
Many lessons were learned during the process. The main one is the market demanding a lot of transparency and auditing. We already knew this would be important, but it came a little earlier than we expected.
We’ve already put the transparency portal on the air, and we’re already closing an auditing for the BRZ balances. The market, especially the Brazilian, is very cautious, afraid of nasty surprises. This is due to recent news of scandals, brokers running away with money from the customers. So I believe this has served as a motivator for this kind of agenda.
The second thing is the marketing making issue. It has become a very important lesson for us that we have a critical role in price formation in the various markets. So we must keep talking with both ends, with the seller and with the buyer, to make the BRZ have traction and be used as a trade tool.
When the auditing is expected to be concluded?
The forecast is that we’ll soon have the audit by signing the extracts and the money supply of the BRZ. We already have the transparency portal for the user to observe the reserves, and we will have a law and accounting firm checking and going through the reserves position.
How many tokens have been issued?
11.7 million tokens, which equals R$ 11.7 million. It is important to say that some of these tokens are in treasury, which means, they are being thrown on the market as soon as the buyers actually make the deposit. We have all these reserves and expect them to go into circulation in the exchanges for the next 15 or 20 days.
Is that the limit or the limit is higher?
As a matter of fact, there’s no limit. Whenever we have one Brazilian real in reserve, we can issue a token. So it all depends on the market’s demand.
Have you ever had any important feedback from the customers and the market?
We had experiences with some great buyers. The first thing is to make the customer understand that it is a stablecoin and that they have to trust that the price will remain stable. So they always ask for this kind of guarantee, which is basically translated into pricing in international exchanges. The experience we had is that these buyers always ask if the reserves really exist, if the liquidity of the international books is good enough. It’s always a matter of liquidity.
What is the main profile of the BRZ customers today?
BRZ customers today are mainly cryptocurrency market operators. People who do arbitrage, who operate among various brokers. I would say 90% are Brazilians.
Are they using it in order to operate on the market without needing to get exposed to the bitcoin initially?
Exactly. They are using the token as a hedge tool to reduce volatility, and to solve with a more stable instrument.
How is the process of buying the token here in Brazil?
Currently, the client has some options. He can access the 3RZ, but it acts more as a manager of the reserve, so it serves qualified customers, with larger purchasing volume, as if it were wholesale. For retail, customers can access Profitfy or Union Trade and shop for smaller fractions of the BRZ. Or if they’re overseas, they can buy it in international exchanges.
Is there a prospect of listing in more exchanges?
Yes, there is. We are holding discussions not only with exchanges, but also with large international platforms, which function as exchanges but also have other services. We have some other platforms that have shown interest in the BRZ.
How did the market react to the BRZ ?
We perceived much interest in the market, from the private sector, large Brazilian banks.
Are there future synergies to be leveraged between BRZ and Transfero?
The BRZ is a project of Transfero as a brand, but the issue of synergy exists. As Transfero is an asset manager of crypto, it can use BRZ as one of its investment instruments, to implement hedge strategy. Like it or not, people who work at Transfero today have a macro view of how the BRZ works. So this is rather a synergy from the viewpoint of both the counter market as well as the investment management.
What would be the next steps of the BRZ, that can be considered as a natural evolution?
As we have already discussed, the auditing processes and transparency, listing in new exchanges and international platforms related to cryptocurrencies. The next steps are precisely towards the consolidation as an instrument recognized by the Brazilian market, and who knows, perhaps by the government, as the main Brazilian stablecoin. And whenever people think about Brazil, they could think about BRZ as the easiest way to access this market, which is still very hermetic.
What else is on the radar?
We have on our roadmap the integration with other blockchains. Today it is integrated with the blockchain of Ethereum, but we open the possibility for integration into other blockchains as well, according to the necessities, of different platforms and customers. We can say that the BRZ roadmap, much more pro-future, may include a crosschain operation, using the Ethereum, Stellar and even Binance blockchain.
Do these blockchains work with the proof of stake protocol?
Stellar’s blockchain already got it, Ethereum is going to migrate, so, yes, it’s on our roadmap.
