LATAM’s Largest Investment Bank BTG Pactual Launches Bitcoin, Crypto Exchange

• The largest investment bank in Latin America just launched a cryptocurrency exchange in Brazil.
• The exchange will only support bitcoin and one other cryptocurrency at launch.
• BTG Pactual holds over $1 trillion in managed assets.

BTG Pactual, the largest investment bank in Latin America, just launched a bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange in Brazil, per an announcement from the bank.

The bank’s new trading platform is called Mynt and will enable users to have direct access to bitcoin, placing it among the first leading financial institutions in Brazil to do so. Additionally, the investment bank with over $1 trillion of assets under management will provide educational content for all of its users about bitcoin once users have established an account.

“Content will be a part of Mynt at all levels,” Pedro Frazzo, product manager for Mynt said in an interview prior to the release.

“Any product we launch will come along with some content like a video or a paper that provide the means for the customer to understand more about what they’re investing in, and if they have any questions the app has a 24/7 chat function,” Frazzo continued.

Additionally, when partner and head of digital assets at BTG Andre Portilho was asked what bitcoin is backed by in the same interview, he said:

“Bitcoin’s backing isn’t physical. It is backed by the mathematics underpinning its blockchain, and this technology guarantees the safety of its transactions.”

However, it currently remains unclear who will back Mynt and serve the custodian of the physical bitcoin, as well as whether or not clients of Mynt will be able to withdraw their bitcoin from the platform in order to self-custody. Nonetheless, the company still believes that the world of finance is headed into changing tides.

“Our vision is that crypto technology will do to the finance industry what the internet did to the information industry, it changed it completely,” Portilho concluded in the interview.

BTG Pactual joins the ranks of other institutions entering the growing Brazilian market such as XP Inc., who just earlier today, released bitcoin trading services on its brand new platform – Xtage. Additionally, banking giant Santander began discussing plans to enter the ecosystem as well.