Brazil’s largest brokerage – Grupo XP, announced it is to enter the crypto sphere with the launch of an exchange dealing with Bitcoin and Ethereum. The new crypto exchange, to be called XDEX will be launched in the next few months and is expected to start with 40 employees and deal exclusively with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH)
Grupo XP, owner of XP Investimentos SA is Brazil’s largest independent broker and the biggest financial group in Brazil. Initially, Grupo XP had plans to launch an over-encounter (OTC) Bitcoin exchange earlier in April the year. The multinational which was founded in 2001 by Guilherme Benchimol and Marcelo Maisonnave first registered a company called XP COIN INTERMEDIACAO back in August last year. After a 5 million reals (about $1.5 million) capital injection later in 2017, XP COIN INTERMEDIACAO underwent a rebradning and became XDEX.
Grupo XP has 500,000 active customers at present, with more than 120 billion reals ($30 billion) in its vaults. Grupo XP is being touted to be in control 1 trillion reals ($245 billion) by the year 2020 via its custodial services and is expected to launch its own bank in the near future.
On the launch of a new crypto exchange, Guilherme Benchimol, the President of XP Investimentos SA said: “I must confess, this is a theme I’d rather didn’t exist, but it does. We felt obligated to start advancing in this market.”
The move by Grupo XP is not unexpected. At present, there are believed to be 3 million Brazilians ‘exposed’ to Bitcoin, whilst only 600,000 Brazilians are currently investing in the Stock markets.
Just this week, Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) announced an investigation into six major Brazilian banks concerning alleged monopolistic practices in the cryptocurrency sphere. According to a report released by CADE “the main banks are imposing restrictions or even prohibiting … access to the financial system by cryptocurrency brokerages.” The banks in question have reportedly claimed that the brokers’ accounts were closed because of the absence of client data.
