Key Highlights
- Paradigm invests $13.5M in Crown, marking its first venture into Brazil and valuing the stablecoin startup at $90 million.
- Crown’s BRLV stablecoin is pegged to the Brazilian real, backed by government bonds, and has over R$360 million ($66M) in subscriptions.
- Crown targets institutional clients first, offers high-interest exposure safely, and aims for one trillion reais of BRLV in circulation within ten years.
Paradigm, one of the biggest venture capital firms in the crypto industry, has made its first investment in Brazil by putting $13.5 million into Crown, a stablecoin company building digital money tied to the Brazilian real. This Series A round values Crown at $90 million.
The company noted that Crown stands out because the team already has strong experience in fintech and working with large financial companies. Ricardo de Arruda, a Brazilian partner at Paradigm, said the company was impressed by Crown’s early growth and how quickly its stablecoin was gaining trust.
He added that stablecoins grow faster when more people use them, saying, “The liquidity network effects that you build when you are the main stablecoin of a currency are extremely strong… we expect Crown to do so well because Crown is already far ahead in liquidity compared to other BRL stablecoins.”
Crown’s strategy for Brazil’s market
Crown is the company behind BRLV, a stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian real and fully backed by Brazilian government bonds, which are known for high interest rates. The team says that BRLV has grown to become the largest stablecoin in any emerging market, with more than R$360 million (around $66 million) subscribed so far.
At the moment, BRLV is used only by institutions such as funds and big firms that want safe and easy access to Brazil’s high interest rates.
“We’re just getting started: our goal is R$1 trillion in BRLV circulating in the next decade – roughly a high single-digit percentage of Brazil’s M2 money supply. For comparison, the largest USD stablecoins are widely expected to surpass this percentage of M2 in the next few years,” the Crown team stated in the official blog post.
Crown co-founder John Delaney said the company was created to fix two main problems: the high local interest rate in Brazil and the need for strong safety for large financial players.
“Interest rates in Brazil are really high… it’s very unlikely anyone’s going to get away with zero yield here,” Delaney said. He also explained that big institutions will only use digital money if it feels completely safe, saying Crown built its system to offer “institutional grade safety and security.”
Crown believes demand will rise among both large institutions and regular users. Delaney said the company’s long-term goal is bold: one trillion reais of BRLV in circulation within ten years.
The project earlier raised $8.1 million in a seed round from investors such as Framework Ventures, Valor Capital Group, Coinbase Ventures, Norte Ventures, Paxos, and Nubank co-founder Ed Wible.
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