Mercado Bitcoin Partners with Stellar Development Foundation in the LIFT Challenge Real Digital by the Central Bank of Brazil and Fenasbac

SAN FRANCISCO, May 24, 2022 - Mercado Bitcoin, the largest exchange in Latin America, has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) to develop one of the nine projects selected for the LIFT Challenge Real Digital, a collaborative environment carried out by the Central Bank of Brazil (Bacen), in partnership with National Federation of Associations of Central Bank Servers (Fenasbac), to explore use cases for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). With this announcement, SDF joins CPQD and ClearSale as part of Mercado Bitcoin’s LIFT Challenge consortium.

The Bacen initiative aims to identify the fundamental characteristics of an infrastructure for Real Digital that will be able to support the use cases presented by the participants of the LIFT Challenge. Bacen anticipates that the Real Digital will be launched in the second half of 2022 and, in its first phase, will be piloted for a restricted audience.

Mercado Bitcoin selected the Stellar network because it is the network of choice for other CDBC projects, stablecoin issuance, and financial asset tokenization due to its unique combination of speed, efficiency, security, and compliance.

"We are in a consortium of companies that have the structure and ambition to build robust solutions for the financial market through blockchain technology. Utilizing the Stellar network will allow us to deliver a complete case for evaluation by the Central Bank," said Reinaldo Rabelo, CEO of Mercado Bitcoin.

SDF is a non-profit organization that aims to unlock global economic potential, making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered.

“As SDF partners with Mercado Bitcoin in the LIFT Challenge Real Digital, the Stellar ecosystem grows stronger,” says Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation. “Stellar’s network is prepared to support Mercado Bitcoin and the Central Bank of Brazil as they explore use cases for the Real Digital’s future. Stellar was designed for asset issuance, and its built-in compliance tools give Mercado Bitcoin a strong foundation to develop a solution with the features that Bacen expects to see.”

Among the main attributes that make Stellar excellent for implementing tokenization and payments projects are:

1. Optimized for Payments: speed (~5 seconds for settlement of transactions); scalability (~200 transactions per second*); low cost (less than 1/10th of one cent per transaction).

2. Security and Compliance: the Stellar network allows financial institutions to perform KYC/AML checks when transacting and includes built-in features allowing unified KYC/AML compliance across parties transacting on the network.

3. Sustainability: the Stellar Consensus Protocol yields efficient transactions that are less energy-intensive than proof-of-work chains.

4. Simplicity: Operations such as issuing a stablecoin, trading multiple assets, and securing multi-signatures are native functions of the Stellar network and can be implemented with just a couple of lines of code.

*Transaction speed data may change at irregular intervals due to network activity.

About Stellar
Stellar is a decentralized, fast, scalable, and uniquely sustainable network for financial products and services. It is both a cross-currency transaction system and a platform for digital asset issuance, designed to connect the world’s financial infrastructure. Dozens of financial institutions worldwide issue assets and settle payments on the Stellar network, which has grown to over 6 million accounts. For more information, visit stellar.org.

About the Stellar Development Foundation
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world’s financial infrastructure. Founded in 2014, the Foundation helps maintain Stellar’s codebase, supports the technical and business communities building on the network, and serves as a voice to regulators and institutions. The Foundation seeks to create equitable access to the global financial system, using the Stellar network to unlock the world’s economic potential through blockchain technology. For more information, visit stellar.org/foundation.

About Mercado Bitcoin
Mercado Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency and alternative asset trading platform in Latin America. The company, which offers freedom, security, and liquidity in trading, is among the 25 most trusted exchanges in the world to trade cryptoassets, according to a study conducted by the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI). With more than 3.5 million customers and more than R$40 billion traded since its creation in 2013, the company is transforming people's relationships with their own money and democratizing access to alternative assets with liquidity and security.