Tony Volpon, former director of the Central Bank of Brazil, unveiled BRD, a yield-sharing stablecoin linked to the Brazilian currency and backed by Brazilian government debt.
Speaking on the “Cripto na Real” show on CNN Brazil, Volpon said the token would be backed by national Treasury bonds, tying its value to sovereign debt and aiming to give holders exposure to local interest rates. The central bank’s benchmark interest rate is 15%, compared to the Federal Reserve’s target of 3.5% to 3.75%.
Volpon said the goal was to make Brazil’s high-yield environment more accessible to foreign investors. Although Brazilian interest rates have long attracted international attention, access to these returns is often limited by regulation, currency frictions and domestic infrastructure.
“The ability to remunerate stablecoin holders with the interest rates offered by Brazil will obviously be a major attraction, especially for institutional investors,” Volpon said during the program.
The former central bank official also suggested that the stablecoin could support the country’s demand for debt, potentially reducing borrowing costs by broadening the investor base.
BRD will enter a market dominated by Transfero’s BRZ, which has a market capitalization of $185 million. Other competitors include BBRL, with a market capitalization of $51 million, as well as smaller tokens, BRL1, backed by a group including Brazilian exchanges Mercado Bitcoin and Bitso, and the Celo blockchain’s native cREAL.
BRD seeks to distinguish itself as the first real-peg token to explicitly structure the token to share the yield of government debt collateral with holders.
But it’s not the only one. Brazilian startup Crown raised $13.5 million in a Series A round led by Paradigm in December for a similarly yielding token, BRLV. This token, according to a website dedicated to it, has around $19 million reals in circulation. The contract addresses shown show that there are only two holders.
