Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] exposed to over 3 million brazilians

XP Investimentos, one of the largest independent brokers in Brazil, recently announced that they will be opening an exchange platform in the coming months for trading Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH].

XP Investimentos is an integral part of the XP Group that concentrate on several brands in the financial market and has recently joined the cryptocurrency industry, says Bloomberg reports.

At an event in Sao Paulo, Guilherme Benchimol, the CEO of XP Investimentos stated that almost 3 million Brazilians had exposure to Bitcoin [BTC] whereas only 600,000 individuals invested in the stock market. Benchimol was further ready to undertake the risk in pushing XP Investimentos into the cryptocurrency industry. He further added:

“I must confess, this is a theme I’d rather didn’t exist, but it does…… We felt obligated to start advancing in this market.”

XDEX is the new cryptocurrency exchange which will focus on working independently from the other brokerage businesses owned by XP Investimentos. Thiago Maffra, an experienced financial marketing official will be running the exchange. The new cryptocurrency exchange will have around 40 employees.

According to the report, XP Investimentos’ entry into the Over-the-Counter [OTC] Bitcoin space was a huge step. This could result in the biggest banks in Brazil being directly involved in the cryptocurrency market. Itau Unibanco Holding S.A, a financial institution has recently suggested buying a 49.9% stake in XP’s voting capital for 5.7 billion reais [$1.5 billion].

Benchimol further stated that XP Investimentos will also be opening a new bank in the next few months. The main agenda of the brokerage was to accumulate 1 trillion reais [$245 billion] by the end of 2020 which is four times more than what they expect to have by the year-end.

According to a recent post, Central Bank of Brazil and other regulators of the Brazilian Financial System announced that they will use a blockchain based technology platform to open the door for country’s financial regulators to exchange information. The blockchain technology platform, Information Integration Platform for Regulators [PIER] was developed by the Central Bank of Brazil’s Information Technology department and is reported to start operations by 2018.