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Stellar joins hands with Mercado Brazil to develop CBDC for Central Bank of Brazil

Mercado Bitcoin and Stellar have come together to explore and develop minimum viable product for a Brazilian CBDC

Shashank Bhardwaj
By Shashank Bhardwaj
Published: May 26, 2022 03:06:08 PM IST
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Image: Shutterstock

One of the largest crypto exchanges in Latin America, Mercado Bitcoin and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), have joined hands to explore use cases and develop a minimum viable product (MVP) for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) by the Central Bank of Brazil (Bacen). The announcement of the partnership was made with regards to one of the nine projects under the LIFT Challenge Real Digital. The challenge is being promoted by the Central Bank of Brazil.


The exchange, whose parent company 2TM was recently acquired by Coinbase, is again creating headlines for its partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation to find and develop an MVP for Digital Real–Brazil's CBDC. Brazil has been much ahead in the race for crypto adoption for quite some time now. Its central bank has partnered with over nine crypto projects, including Aave, Visa, ConsenSys, Microsoft, Santander Brasil Bank, and Itau Unibanco Bank, to meet its CBDC goals.

The Central Bank of Brazil, in partnership with the National Federation of Associations of Central Bank Servers (Fenasbac), is carrying out the LIFT Challenge Real Digital as a collaborative environment. With Tuesday's announcement about the Stellar integration, the SDF will join the consortium formed by Mercado Bitcoin. The consortium’s main job would be to develop solutions for Real Digital. The consortium also includes CPQD and ClearSale.

“We are in a consortium of companies that have the structure and ambition to build robust solutions for the financial market through blockchain technology. Utilising the Stellar network will allow us to deliver a complete case for evaluation by the Central Bank,” said Reinaldo Rabelo, CEO of Mercado Bitcoin. The company chose the Stellar network for the protocol's speed, efficiency, and security.

SDF’s CEO Denelle Dixon said, “Stellar’s network is prepared to support Mercado Bitcoin and the Central Bank of Brazil as they explore use cases for Real Digital’s future. Stellar was designed for asset issuance, and its built-in compliance tools give Mercado Bitcoin a strong foundation to develop a solution with the features that Bacen expects to see.”

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The president of Brazil's Central Bank, Campos Neto, had confirmed earlier that the country’s CBDC project would go live this year. The release would initially be a pilot version and wouldn’t be available to all the people. Campos Neto said that Real Digital is also hoping to enable smart contracts and Defi on Brazil’s CBDC platform.

Neto had earlier said, “The Real Digital initiative is a response to the rapid progress of digital transformation and society's demand for native means of settlement in a new environment. conditions for important efficiency gains to be achieved.”

The writer is the founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash

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