Tony Volpon, former head of the Central Bank of Brazil, introduced BRD, a yield-sharing stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian currency and backed by Brazilian government debt.
Speaking on CNN Brazil’s “Cripto na Real” program, Volpon said the token will be backed by National Treasury bonds, tying its value to sovereign debt and aiming to provide its 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%-3.75%.
Volpon said the goal is to make Brazil’s high-yield environment more accessible to foreign investors. While Brazil’s interest rates have long attracted international attention, he said, access to these returns is often limited by regulation, currency friction and domestic infrastructure.
“The ability to remunerate stablecoin holders with the interest rates offered by Brazil will obviously be a big draw, especially for institutional investors,” Volpon said during the program.
The former central bank official also suggested that the stablecoin could support demand for the country’s debt, potentially reducing borrowing costs by expanding 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, which is backed by a group that includes Brazilian exchanges Mercado Bitcoin and Bitso, and the Celo blockchain native cREAL.
BRD seeks to distinguish itself as the first real-pegged token that explicitly structures the token to share government debt backing yields with holders.
However, you are not alone. Brazilian startup Crown raised $13.5 million in a series A round led by Paradigm in December for a similarly performing token, BRLV. That token, according to a website dedicated to it, has around 19 million reais in circulation. The contract addresses listed show that it only has two holders.
