Brazil: USDT, Bitcoin [BTC], and…? New crypto-declarations suggest…

In what is a major development, the latest figures associated with crypto-declarations have been released by Receita Federal do Brasil (RFB), Brazil’s leading tax authority. The numbers reveal that crypto-popularity is on the rise in the South American country. Under Brazilian law, entities are required to declare information about activities related to crypto. The declarations for the month of August 2022 have set a new record with 12053 entities revealing crypto-holdings on their balance sheets. 

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This marked a 6% increase in declarations compared to July which saw 11,360 companies declaring their crypto-holdings. 

A deep dive

While the number of companies declaring crypto went up, the number of individual investors holding crypto fell to 1.3 million for the month of August. 

The rise in the number of declarations did not translate into a rise in value, however. On the contrary, the value of transactions fell by 38.2%, going from $3.4 billion in July down to $2.1 billion in August. 

Bitcoin and Tether (USDT) have been identified as the top holdings in the declarations. USDT came in first followed by BTC. The top ten names include Ethereum, XRP, and Cardano. However, BTC was the most traded crypto in August. 

The transactions made in USDT overshadowed the next 9 names on the list combined. It is possible that companies are looking at the dollar-pegged stablecoin as an alternative store of value. 

Holding for speculative purposes can be ruled out since the top ten names do not include a small cap crypto with high growth potential. 

Another interesting statistic that has come to light is the reducing percentage of men contributing to crypto-transactions. Since the beginning of this year, the percentage of men in this field has fallen by 3.6%. Meanwhile the percentage of women has gone up by 19.6%. 

According to the Global Crypto Adoption Index published by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, Brazil ranks seventh on the list. 

Here, it’s worth noting that rising inflation in Brazil may have had a role to play in the rise in interest in cryptocurrencies. In fact, at the time of writing, the inflation rate was as high as 8.7%