Is shopping in Brazil with cryptocurrencies already a reality? How does it work?

Cryptocurrencies are weekly themes in many economic sectors of Brazil and the world – some currencies jumped over 1,300% in value in 2017, after all. This boom happened due to the spread of the blockchain technology’s security boosting the growing purchase of cryptocurrencies. Now let’s see in practice how digital currencies are being used for shopping.

On one side there are banks and the government. On the other side, there are businessmen and individual taxpayers aiming at the cryptocurrencies’ valuing.

To answer to such demands, the investment dealers are updating their platforms, training their brokers and recycling themselves to assist the ones interested in dealing cryptocurrencies. This is very good for the digital economy, because it has been helping maturing the cryptocurrencies scene in Brazil.

It’s important to look at the concept of cryptocurrencies. They were created in order to have more profitability, less control and intervention from governments and profits possibly higher than those coming from Dollar, Euro, gold, government bonds, real state and other “conventional” models offered at the stock exchanges.

In Brazil, cryptocurrencies’ buyers have been investing and saving in order to have a future income, an optimistic behavior, and that’s why they’re not “very interested” in using the cryptocurrencies for shopping at commercial places or in trips.

For this reason, people – consumers in Brazil are still researching and monitoring the “rollercoaster” of the main dealt cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), EOS (EOS), Litecoin (LTC), Stellar (XLM), etc.

Businessmen expectations in accepting the cryptocurrencies in their wholesale and retail business, offices, hotels and apps are still low. They still haven’t found a practical way of accepting the currency, and the devaluating risks and the “informality” still scare administrators. Another reason is the delay of the transaction’s validation in the blockchain, which is slow – it may take up to four hours to be processed.

In Brazil the regulation of the cryptocurrencies (taxes and consumer law) are still maturing and negotiations aren’t very well defined yet. This generates instability in the market, making it impossible to predict if cryptocurrencies will value or if one day they won’t value anything at all.

Recently, researches show that some places in Brazil are enthusiastic with the possible valorization of cryptocurrencies. Some already advertise it. Such is the case of Tecnisa – Imóveis, Studio Wayne Tattoo, PreVet Home, Nobile Plaza Hotel, JS Hostel, Grupo Reserva and Mundpag. In the technology market, CargoX, a Brazilian Startup which offers cargo transport services based on technology and Big Data, is also already accepting cryptocurrencies. Besides it, other companies and e-commerce websites have shown interest and have future plans to accept a digital currency as a payment method, providing Brazilians and foreigners with more convenience when shopping.

United States, on the other hand, are at another level. Around 7,000 establishments already take cryptocurrencies, specially e-commerce websites and hotels. At https://coinmap.org you can see a map of the establishments which take digital money. Another way of finding them is the Tagcity app (https://www.tagtagcity.com/), which finds establishments near you.

Now it’s oficial! 100,000 cryptocurrencies ATMs will be installed in the United States.

A deal between Bitcoin ATM company LibertyX and ATM manufacturer Genmega will allow users to buy Bitcoins using a debit card in various locations. USA is already the country with most Bitcoin ATMs in the world.

In Japan, things are very different. Banks are the ones responsible for negotiating the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies. Many establishments already take them and the market is a little more organized, and slowly the payment method is being introduced, as with credit and debit cards in the past.

In Brazil, it is estimated that we have not even 100 establishments that take cryptocurrencies as a payment method. However, the Brazilian scenario is highly favorable. Today, there are over 1,5 million individual taxpayers with at least a fraction of Bictoins in their digital accounts, over twice the number of Brazilian investors at the stock exchange (Bovespa), who add up to 619,000 registered individual taxpayers.

This demonstrates that there will soon be a bubble burst and new payment services and gateways may emerge for the currencies to be transacted in a faster and simpler way in Brazil.

Some dealers are already releasing their apps to try and accelerate this process, such as the Corretora Mercado Bitcoin’s app, which provides real-time information and allows the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.

Now we can only wait and evaluate how banks and governments will react to the regulation of cryptocurrencies and which fees and taxes will be fixated for Brazilian companies to take digital money.