Twelve years after the launch as an cryptocurrency exchange, Mercado Bitcoin aims to be something completely different.
Less focused on price graphics and trading pairs, the company based in São Paulo now speaks more of the Pix payments of the Central Bank of Brazil, digital fixed income securities and rationalized funds.
The head of business development of Mercadoin Bitcoin, Daniel Cunha, told Coindesk in an interview on the sidelines of the DAC 2025 conference of the exchange that the company wanted to become the application where the Brazilians manage their financial life. A kind of “super application” for expenses, savings and investment.
However, calling MB a “super application” may not completely capture the essence of the strategy. His leadership prefers a different term: a financial center that mixes funding inherited with blockchain, allowing users to draw from both without having to understand either.
“The revolution occurs when the protocol disappears,” Cunha told Coindesk. “The customer does not want to hear about blockchains and tokens. He wants to know the rate, the risk and the deadline,” he said, referring to the tokenized fixed income offers of the exchange.
‘Invisible blockchain’
This thought has reshaped how MB presents to users. Instead of counting on crypto-nest vocabulary, the company is now emphasizing the functionality of its offer. A major change involved deleting the term “tokenization” in materials oriented by users, said Cunha.
“We tried a ton of variations,” said Cunha. “When we stopped saying” token “and we started saying” digital fixed income “, things took off.” The idea is to have a product whose backend is powered by blockchain technology, but the front is more recognizable for the masses.
Essentially, MB’s bet is that the “invisible blockchain” is the next border.
“We will see a lot of people using the blockchain without realizing that they use the blockchain,” said MB. “This is when you know that the revolution occurred.”
Investment products based on the company’s flagship blockchain focus on the tokenized private credit, a segment which, according to him, is ill -served and mature for disturbances in Brazil.
Brazil ranks among the first five countries for the use of retail cryptography, according to the global index for the adoption of the cryptography of Chainalysy. MB is positioned as a response to a common point of pain in the country through a payment service based on stabbed.
A trading pivot
Despite all the new initiatives, the MB’s main company, Crypto Trading, still represents the majority of its income. But this balance changes.
At its peak, the exchanges represented 95% of the company’s income. Today, this number is closer to 60%, the rest from payments, guard, token investments and services such as asset management. Over time, the company expects exchanges to fall below 30%, Cunha revealed.
As part of this change, the company is also developing geographically. He now has a customer-oriented operation in Portugal and built institutional channels in the United States, aimed at connecting capital and investment opportunities on the markets.
Mercado Bitcoin, where a large part of the assets under management is made up of small and means of treasury bills, plans to exceed 3 billion reais ($ 563 million) in token credit issuance by the end of the year. About 20% of assets in custody on the platform are now real assets in Tokenized (RWAS), against practically zero just a few years ago.
The pivot is in a wider thrust to create “super financial applications”. CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, said that Coinbase aims to be a “super application” supplied by Crypto which would provide “all types of financial services”.
Beyond the crypto, fintechs such as Revolut and Paytm bring together payments, loans and investment. The Playbook borrows from WeChat and Alipay, applies which brings together social, financial and other features.
Read more: Crypto Exchange Mercado Bitcoin for Tokenize 200 million dollars in real assets on XRP Ledger
