Yesterday Brazil’s BTG Pactual investment bank said it would launch its cryptocurrency offering Mynt in the fourth quarter. Initially, investors will be able to buy and sell Bitcoin and Ether, but there are plans to expand the available digital asset options. BTG Pactual is one of Latin America’s biggest investment banks with total assets of $63 billion at the end of last quarter.
“It is for the customer who is not necessarily an expert or enthusiast in the cryptocurrency market, but who wants to have the security and support of BTG,” said André Portilho, head of Digital Assets at BTG Pactual, talking to NeoFeed. “Mynt will also bring content with the aim of educating and informing customers about this new technology.”
According to the news site, the Brazilian Association of Cryptoeconomics (Abcripto) said that this year R$ 25 billion ($4.7 billion) has been transferred from banks to cryptocurrency platforms. That will be an underestimate of activity as it is only new funds added.
BTG already offers exposure to cryptocurrency through two funds, one which offers a 20% exposure and the other a 100% crypto-asset investment, although the latter only launched in May. To date, the amount invested is relatively small at R$ 58 million ($11m) combined.
The Brazilian bank has been involved in the blockchain world for some time. Since 2019 it has been a member of GBBC’s Post-Trade Distributed Ledger (PTDL) Group. And last year, it launched a security token offering on the public Tezos blockchain for its real estate token reitbz.
