Brazilian stablecoin issuer Crown has secured $13.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm, marking the venture capital firm’s first investment in a Brazilian company. The deal values Crown at $90 million. This follows an $8.1 million seed round in mid-October led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Paxos, bringing Crown’s total funding to over $20 million within two months. Crown issues BRLV, a Brazilian Real-pegged stablecoin. While its current circulation is modest at just over 100 million tokens (worth under $20 million) and it primarily serves institutional clients, investors are backing the company’s potential and its founding team’s expertise. The team includes CEO John Delaney, former COO of Brazilian fintech Xerpa; Chief Engineer Vinicius Correa, an early engineer at digital bank Nubank; and other executives with backgrounds at major financial institutions like JPMorgan and UBS. The founders have experience scaling Brazilian companies from the ground up. Crown’s thesis is that a local stablecoin can support the national economy by providing purchasing power for government bonds, creating a virtuous cycle that further stimulates stablecoin adoption. The investment highlights Brazil’s growing prominence as a fintech and crypto hub. Despite a history of high inflation, Brazil has made significant strides in monetary stability. The country’s high crypto adoption rate—ranking fifth globally according to Chainalysis—is driven more by utility for trade, tax efficiency, capital movement, and crypto trading than by currency deflation fears. Key structural factors make Brazil attractive: – A large, digitally-native population of over 200 million with high smartphone penetration. – A historically concentrated and expensive traditional banking sector, which created fertile ground for fintech disruption, exemplified by Nubank’s success. – Proactive central bank policies, notably the 2020 launch of Pix, a free, instant, 24/7 payment system now used by over 90% of the population. Pix provides low-cost infrastructure for financial innovation. – A robust fintech ecosystem with over 1,500 companies. Crown’s BRLV differentiates itself by offering holders a share of the yield from Brazilian government bonds, which currently offer rates around 15%. Future plans include integrating with the Pix system, enabling seamless transactions and potential DeFi applications. Analysts suggest that while dollar stablecoins are used in Brazil for practical purposes, a local currency stablecoin with yield and deep integration into the national payment infrastructure could unlock significant new demand.
