Brazilian corporates drove 78% of Mercado Bitcoin's Sunday trading

Brazilian corporate accounts generated 78% of trading on Mercado Bitcoin on election day, according to CoinDesk.

Turnover in Tether's USDT rose nearly 800% from the week before, the exchange said.

USDT turnover was also more than triple its average across the four preceding Sundays, and bitcoin trading rose 865% from the previous Sunday, Mercado Bitcoin said. Retail customers accounted for 22% of the day's volume.

Advisors whose clients hold real-denominated assets or run businesses in Brazil now have a same-day measure of where dollar demand goes when the currency moves: into USDT on an exchange's corporate desk. Mercado Bitcoin says corporate clients hold up to 15% of their assets on the platform, which puts custody and settlement risk into the treasury conversation alongside the currency call.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential election on Sunday, and the next day the Ibovespa fell 14%, its worst session since March 2020, while the dollar gained more than 8% against the real. That move was its largest daily gain since 1999. Lula's platform of higher social spending and an online-betting ban that would cut tax revenue raised concerns about Brazil's finances, adding pressure on the real and keeping borrowing costs high, CoinDesk reported.

Three weeks earlier, when Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round, the Ibovespa rose 7.7% and the dollar weakened more than 4% against the real as investors anticipated tighter control over public spending.

Biscoint, which tracks prices and volume across 10 venues including Binance and Mercado Bitcoin, recorded a 150% rise in USDT-real turnover from the previous Sunday and a 318% gain in USDC.

In a survey EY-Parthenon published this month, which Private Wealth Daily covered, 69% of financial-institution respondents said they offer or plan stablecoin services within two years, with cross-border B2B payments the most common use case.