Karla Barker 
From Trading Platform to Financial Hub
Twelve years after starting as a cryptocurrency exchange, Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin is undergoing a significant transformation. The São Paulo-based company is moving away from its original focus on price charts and trading pairs, instead positioning itself as a comprehensive financial platform. According to Daniel Cunha, the company’s head of corporate development, the goal is to become the primary app where Brazilians manage their entire financial lives—from spending and saving to investing.
But calling it simply a “super app” might not fully capture what they’re trying to build. The leadership prefers to think of it as a financial hub that seamlessly blends traditional finance with blockchain technology. The key insight driving this shift is that most users don’t actually care about the underlying technology—they just want reliable financial services that work.
The Invisible Blockchain Strategy
“The revolution happens when the protocol disappears,” Cunha explained in an interview during the company’s DAC 2025 conference. “Customers don’t want to hear about blockchains and tokens. They want to know the rate, the risk, and the maturity date.” This philosophy has fundamentally changed how Mercado Bitcoin presents itself to users.
One of the most telling changes involved completely removing the term “tokenization” from user-facing materials. “We tried a ton of variations,” Cunha said. “When we stopped saying ‘token’ and started saying ‘digital fixed income,’ things took off.” The company’s approach is to build products where blockchain powers the backend, but the frontend remains familiar and accessible to everyday users.
This “invisible blockchain” strategy represents what Mercado Bitcoin believes is the next frontier for the technology. “We’re going to see a lot of people use blockchain without realizing they’re using blockchain,” the company stated. “That’s when you know the revolution has happened.”
Business Model Evolution
Despite all these new initiatives, crypto trading still accounts for the majority of Mercado Bitcoin’s revenue—but that balance is rapidly changing. At its peak, trading represented 95% of the company’s income. Today, that figure has dropped to around 60%, with the rest coming from payments, custody services, tokenized investments, and asset management.
The company expects trading to eventually fall below 30% of total revenue. This shift reflects a broader change in strategy as Mercado Bitcoin expands its geographic footprint. The company now operates in Portugal and is building institutional channels in the United States, aiming to connect capital with investment opportunities across different markets.
Real-World Asset Focus
Mercado Bitcoin’s flagship blockchain-based investment products focus on tokenized private credit, a segment the company believes is underserved in Brazil. The platform, where a significant portion of assets under management come from small and medium enterprise treasuries, expects to surpass 3 billion reais ($563 million) in tokenized credit issuance by year-end.
About 20% of assets under custody on the platform are now tokenized real-world assets, up from virtually zero just a few years ago. This growth reflects both market demand and the company’s successful pivot toward more traditional financial products powered by blockchain infrastructure.
The company’s strategy aligns with broader trends in the fintech space, where platforms like Revolut and Paytm are bundling payments, lending, and investing services. This approach borrows from successful models like WeChat and Alipay, which combine social, financial, and other features in single applications.
Mercado Bitcoin’s transformation represents a maturing of the cryptocurrency industry, where the focus shifts from speculative trading to practical financial applications that serve real economic needs. The company’s success will likely depend on whether it can deliver on its promise of making blockchain technology invisible while providing tangible value to Brazilian consumers and businesses.