Brazil Crypto Report

🙌 You can listen to BCR on your favorite podcast platform YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts🔥 Join the BCR English language Telegram group to continue the conversationOla pessoal! I had the chance to catch up with Sthefano Batista at Merge Sao Paulo. Sthefano is Head of Latam at Figment, which is the world’s largest provider of institutional staking services with more than $18 billion in assets staked. Figment counts BlackRock, Nubank, and Robinhood among its clients, and is responsible for 5 to 6 percent of all Ethereum validated globally. Why Institutions Are Embracing StakingFor traditional finance, digital asset staking is a genuinely new concept. It is not a bond. It is not a dividend. The yield comes from supporting the network itself, and the risk profile is fundamentally different from anything in a legacy portfolio.What has resonated with institutional clients, Sthefano explains, is precisely that difference. Staking on a network like Solana or Ethereum, done correctly through a non-custodial provider, means client assets never leave their wallets. Figment never touches private keys. If Figment disappeared tomorrow, clients would still have their assets.That can be a hard pitch to make to compliance teams. But once it lands, it tends to land well.The Edge Is in the DetailsFigment’s positioning is not built on offering the highest yields. It is built on risk-adjusted performance, and that distinction matters.The firm has a dedicated protocol team that vets every network before onboarding it, monitors governance and inflationary changes, and helps institutional clients understand what updates like Solana’s FireDancer mean in practice. They have never had a slashing event in their history. When you are validating 5 percent of all Ethereum, you do not take shortcuts.Brazil as a Test Case for Regulated StakingBrazil’s updated VASP framework, revised last November, has created one of the clearest regulatory environments for staking anywhere in the world. For Figment, that has been a genuine business accelerant, giving Faria Lima institutions the confidence to move from curiosity to commitment.Sthefano frames it well: the blockchain is global, but how Brazil thinks about investment risk, inflation, and wealth protection is distinctly local. You need people on the ground who understand both.Key Takeaways* Figment manages $18B in staked assets and validates 5 to 6% of all Ethereum* Non-custodial staking means client assets are never held by Figment* Brazil’s VASP regulation has created a clear, compliant path for institutional staking* BlackRock and Nubank are among Figment’s publicly confirmed clients* Figment just launched a USDC yield product and is expanding across the AmericasRecent Episodes Get full access to Brazil Crypto Report at brazilcrypto.substack.com/subscribe

🙌 You can listen to BCR on your favorite podcast platform YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts🔥 Join the BCR English language Telegram group to continue the conversationOla pessoal!At Merge São Paulo, I caught up with Rodrigo Coelho, CEO of Edge & Node, which is the original team behind The Graph protocol.We talked about one of the most exciting intersections in tech right now: agentic commerce and the future of blockchain-powered payments.Rodrigo was born in Brazil, and his family moved to the US when he was young. His path into Web3 started the way a lot of great origin stories do, by accident. Working out of a San Francisco co-working space in 2016, he struck up a friendship with Yaniv Tal, who was building the pitch deck for what would become The Graph.A few years later, Rodrigo was the team’s first hire. He has been with them ever since, taking over as CEO just over a year ago.For the uninitiated, The Graph is the indexing and querying layer that sits beneath much of Web3. If you have ever interacted with a decentralized application, you have almost certainly used it without knowing it.Edge & Node recently launched AMP, a new product that modernizes that infrastructure for institutional use. It offers cryptographic data verification, cross-chain compatibility, and a predictable flat-fee pricing model that banks and financial institutions are finding increasingly attractive as their API costs spiral.The part of our conversation that really stood out was the discussion around agentic commerce.As AI agents become capable of executing real-world tasks autonomously, they need a way to pay for things. A rational agent is not going to choose a payment rail that charges a 3% fee and requires KYC when it could settle a transaction for a thousandth of a cent using stablecoins. That calculus is not even close.Edge & Node has been working on micro-payment infrastructure since 2021. When Coinbase’s X402 standard launched, they jumped on it immediately, contributing a deferred payment scheme that allows nano-payments to be batched and settled on-chain in bulk.It is exactly the kind of boring-but-essential plumbing that makes a new financial system actually work.We also got into the competitive landscape, whether Visa and MasterCard can reinvent themselves before crypto rails make their fee extraction model obsolete, and why the stablecoin wars may not produce a single winner.Key Takeaways:* The Graph quietly powers much of Web3 data infrastructure, and Edge & Node’s new product AMP brings that technology to institutional players with compliance and cost predictability built in* AI agents will gravitate toward crypto payment rails naturally since they cannot easily KYC, and the fee difference vs. traditional rails is not even a contest* Ephemeral virtual cards are a short-term bridge for agentic commerce, but agent-to-agent crypto payments are where things are heading fast* The stablecoin landscape is unlikely to produce one winner; expect a fragmented but interoperable ecosystem, much like traditional banking today* Visa and MasterCard are paying close attention, but their 3% fee model faces a serious structural threat as X402-style rails go mainstreamGive it a listen!Have a great week everyone,-AWSBrazil Crypto Report is presented byFigment is the leading independent provider of staking infrastructure with $18B assets under stake and provides the complete solution for over 1000 institutional clients in Latin America and globally. Through its enterprise-grade infrastructure, Figment enables clients such as banks and exchanges, to earn rewards on Proof-of-Stake assets such as Ethereum and Solana, while maintaining the highest standards of security, compliance, and performance.Recent Episodes Get full access to Brazil Crypto Report at brazilcrypto.substack.com/subscribe

🙌 You can listen to BCR on your favorite podcast platform YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts🔥 Join the BCR English language Telegram group to continue the conversationOla pessoal!If you want to understand where the blockchain talent market is heading, talk to a recruiter. They’re always six months ahead of the news cycle.Owen Healy of Owen Healy Blockchain Talent proves the rule.The Ireland-based blockchain headhunter has spent five years placing developers, BD professionals, DevRels, and marketers at some of the most promising projects in the space. With 50,000 LinkedIn followers and a track record of successfully placing Brazilian talent at global crypto firms, Owen brings a ground-level perspective on where the industry is hiring, who it’s hiring, and why Brazil keeps coming up as one of the most exciting talent pools in the world.BCR is excited to be a media partner for Merge Sao Paulo next week. Shoot me a note if you’re going to be around want to catch up! Key takeaways from the episode:* The blockchain job market is growing up. The early days of hiring only developers and BD folks are over. Product managers, legal professionals, and candidates with traditional finance backgrounds are now in high demand as crypto projects move from experimentation into operational maturity.* TradFi talent is finally making the jump. Wall Street professionals who were curious about crypto but reluctant to give up salary and benefits are finding it easier to transition now — as more institutional-grade firms enter the space and offer risk profiles that actually suit them.* Brazilian talent punches above its weight. Owen consistently highlights Brazilian candidates for their strong engineering skills, clear communication, honesty about their experience, and competitive rates relative to North American counterparts - all while working in compatible time zones.* Remote work is getting harder to secure. Time zones matter more than they did in 2021, and hybrid models are increasingly common. The candidates who remain location-independent are those whose skills are rare enough that companies will bend the rules to hire them.* Job boards alone won’t cut it. Owen’s advice for job seekers: go “multi-chain.” Apply through official channels, but also build genuine relationships inside target companies, get internal advocates, and come to interviews prepared with competitive intelligence.* Referrals still rule. In a small industry where everyone is a second-degree connection from everyone else, a warm introduction remains the single most powerful job search tool.Have a great week everyone,-AWSBrazil Crypto Report is presented byFigment is the leading independent provider of staking infrastructure with $18B assets under stake and provides the complete solution for over 1000 institutional clients in Latin America and globally. Through its enterprise-grade infrastructure, Figment enables clients such as banks and exchanges, to earn rewards on Proof-of-Stake assets such as Ethereum and Solana, while maintaining the highest standards of security, compliance, and performance.Recent Episodes Get full access to Brazil Crypto Report at brazilcrypto.substack.com/subscribe