This article is from cointelegraph.com.br and the original article can be read here in Portuguese
During a conference call in which he presented the financial results for the first quarter, the president of BTG Pactual, Roberto Sallouti, announced that the bank will launch, in 2 months from now, its own Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange.
“We will have our cryptocurrency trading platform in up to two months…. BTG’s proposal is to have a complete investment platform for our clients”, he revealed.
As already announced by BTG, initially the platform, which will be called Mynt, will have initial support for Bitcoin and Ethereum. BTG Pactual customers will be able to access Mynt through the BTG Pactual digital and BTG+ digital bank websites and applications.
“Our goal is to offer access to investments in crypto assets in a simple, direct and secure way. In addition, we will have content for people to know how to invest in new financial market scenarios”, said André Portilho, partner at BTG.
BTG Pactual says its decision to offer the cryptocurrencies is based on market demand and also builds on its reputation as a “pioneer” in digital assets.
“Cryptocurrency is gaining strength as a new asset class and we have seen increasing demand from our customers to access this market securely,” said Portilho.
BTG was one of the first banks in Brazil and Latin America to embrace cryptocurrencies and in February 2019 launched the ReitzBZ, a token backed by the institution’s real estate assets. The token was built on the Tezos blockchain and has already paid its holders in several profit distribution rounds.
The bank also has a own investment with exposure to Ethereum and two with exposure to Bitcoin (BTG Pactual Bitcoin 20 FIC FIM IE and the 100% bitcoin BTG Pactual Bitcoin 100 FIC END IE). Custody of BTG funds is handled by Gemini.
In addition, BTG is one of the distributors of virtually all ETFs with cryptocurrency exposure in Brazil and has a close relationship with Hashdex.
ICO was BTG’s gateway to the crypto world
According to André Portilho, a partner at BTG, the signal for the bank to enter the wave of tokenization and cryptocurrencies was the boom in initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2017. The world without intermediaries, they understood, was a sign of the “new times”.
So the bank decided to “understand what the signal was underneath the noise” and began to study possibilities to enter this market, until they opted for the real estate sector.
“It’s an investment that people around the world are used to making directly or through a vehicle, it’s easy to explain and we’ve already done operations with repossessed properties,” he said.