MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (ViaNews) - The colossal South American country, featuring a population of more than 210 million inhabitants, is having businesses of all kinds (from restaurants to more recently a real estate construction and development company) willing to accept payments with cryptocurrencies, particularly, bitcoin but ethereum, dash, monero, and Iota as well.
According to CoinMap.org, over 11.400 establishments worldwide, are accepting bitcoin as a payment system to this date.
Although the currency is not regulated by the Brazilian Central Bank and is considered a high-speculative asset, bitcoin seems to be a one-way ticket into the future.
Late in November, 2017 and due to the "growing interest" of society and private institutions, the Banco Central do Brazil (BACEN) issued a statement warning on “the risks of trading the so-called virtual currencies", which today hold no guarantees from any monetary authority, though the statement also pointed that it sees “no immediate risk for the Brazilian financial system.”
Bitcoin
The application created in 2009 by mathematician Satoshi Nakamoto, uses blockchain technology.
According to the specialized website coinmarketcap.com, the volatile cryptocurrency has gained the impressive appreciation of 1,800%.
Bitcoin is been acquired more as an investment rather than been used as a digital currency to make payments, mostly due to its high-value market appreciation.
People are “holding” their bitcoins instead of spending them, but as the coin map shows, the market is slowly starting to turn around that tendency, with businesses worldwide making available the new payment system to its customers.
Bitcoin Brazil
Satelital cities such as São Paulo, Curitiba and Porto Alegre stand out as the ones with more establishments accepting the cryptocurrencies as a legit payment method in Brazil.
At Recife (Pernambuco´s capital state) the Paco Alfandega Shopping will be the first in the whole country to accept bitcoins in all of its stores, from January 2018.
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Paço Alfandega Shopping in Recife, the first in Brazil to accept bitcoins in all of its stores, from January 2018. Photo by: Paulo Camelo.[/caption]
Made in Brazil
EDG is the first Brazilian urban mobility firm to accept bitcoins and ethereum as a form of payment in their sales.
The company owned by Formula E reigning champion, Brazilian driver, Lucas Di Grassi, launched last year, the first electric bike fully projected, developed and produced in Brazil, setting an unprecedented by itself.
Ethereum
The open software platform created by Vitalik Buterin enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications.
Last week, the blockchain asset Ethereum reach $ 1000 against the US Dollar.
Back in May 2017, the trading price was placed at 1 ETC = $ 100 (one hundred American dollars).
On the difference between bitcoin and ethereum, Dr. Gavin Wood, Ethereum Co-Founder has stated:
“Bitcoin is first and foremost a currency; this is one particular application of a blockchain. However, it is far from the only application. To take a past example of a similar situation, e-mail is one particular use of the internet, and for sure helped popularise it, but there are many others.”
Ethereum - Blockchain and Technology into the Brazilian Political System
In a country with 145 million voters, gathering signatures to popular petitions is far away from being an easy task.
A new idea has been brought up by Brazilian congressional legislative advisor Ricardo Fernandes Paixão and Everton Fraga, a programmer with the Ethereum Foundation who are working along designing a project that might enable to store signatures in the Ethereum blockchain soon, Quartz Media reported.
According to Brazilian law, when more than one percent of votes are gathered in favor of a popular petition, the Congress has to discuss it.
The Ethereum platform could serve as an effective way to have the votes in favor of a petition, securely counted.
To that end, a mobile app is already being developed.
The user can register their vote details in the app and then place its signature.
The app itself will be able to track the numbers of votes for each petition.
Ethereum will be able to place the signatures under a cryptographical process called hashing for its security.
“With this project, we are doing what the constitution says, but in practice, it hasn’t [yet] happened.”, said Everton Fraga, Ethereum Foundation Ethereum Foundation´s programmer.
“Each day, you can prove from cryptographic proof that a certain signature is already there,” says congressional legislative adviser Ricardo Fernandes Paixão.
They´ve been developing the project since the early start of 2017, but according to Ricardo Fernandes Paixão, it is still waiting for legislative approval.
Paço Alfandega Shopping in Recife, the first in Brazil to accept bitcoins in all of its stores, from January 2018. Photo by: Paulo Camelo.[/caption]