Thiago Cesar is the 34-year-old co-founder of Transfero, a company that helps make cryptocurrency more accessible to Brazilians with BRZ, the first stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian real.
Cesar grew up in the municipality of Pindamonhangaba, in southern Brazil, before making the 90 miles to Sao Paulo for college. A graduate of Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, it wasn’t long, Cesar says, before he became fascinated with bitcoin as a graduate student at the University of London.
“By 2014, I was convinced that bitcoin and cryptocurrency, in general, was going to be a big thing,” Cesar says, which led him to compose his graduate thesis on “the competitive and comparative advantages that Bitcoin can offer a business.”
In 2015, Transfero was born.
Crypto has been a hit in subsequent years: The 2022 Chainalysis report gave Brazil the 1st place of any South American country in its annual cryptocurrency index – and the 7th globally. Crypto’s growing popularity is one of the reasons Rio de Janeiro announced in October that it would begin accepting cryptocurrencies for tax payments, with Transfero facilitating the settlements.
What inspired you to start Transfero?
Transferviro was a dream shared between me and the four Brazilian co-founders. We met in Rio de Janeiro just after my return from the University of London in 2015, where I incidentally wrote my master’s thesis on bitcoin.
One of the co-founders, Marlison Silva, had previous experience in the payments industry and had developed a payment gateway that could also process bitcoin transactions. The system instantly converts bitcoins into reals, so traders don’t have to worry about price fluctuations.
Being a crypto asset pool, our idea was to take advantage of everything the asset class can offer with no limits and permissions. Brazil and other neighboring countries have always been financially limited in some way: whether due to inflation-inducing economic policy as in Argentina or a strict foreign exchange market with some degree of capital controls as in Brazil.
Cryptocurrency can fill multiple gaps for citizens coming from emerging markets. Asset protection, international remittance bars, portfolio diversification, etc. Transfero builds on the legacy financial technologies of LATAM – such as PIX in Brazil – and combines the aforementioned cryptographic elements to deliver products and services that solve common real-world problems in emerging markets.
What are the biggest things Transfero does?
Transfero is one of the biggest fiat ramps in Brazil and Argentina. Many international companies – related to cryptocurrency and non-cryptocurrency – use Transfero to receive deposits and make payments within the Brazilian and Argentine banking systems.
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Transfero is also the issuer of BRZ, which is the stablecoin of BRL. This is the basis for our stablecoin settlements for flows between the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. It is a synthetic representation of BRZ, as the actual BRL currency is non-deliverable. This means that international companies cannot carry them unless they have bank accounts in Brazil.
I also started Transfero Academy. What is its purpose?
Transfero Academy is an educational program for Brazilians from vulnerable neighborhoods. We offer a full-time blockchain technology course, which prepares students for a career in crypto. We have a 95% placement rate for students who have graduated.
Transfero Academy has changed the lives of hundreds of students; We are now partnering with government and private education groups across the country.
Cryptocurrency has a higher adoption rate in Brazil than any other country in Latin America. Why are Brazilians so interested in cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency has opened the world of international finance to Brazilians. Not many people know, but in Brazil you can only have bank accounts denominated in Brazilian reals, and retail traders can only trade stocks on a local exchange called B3.
When Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins arrived, Brazilians finally got access to international platforms and opened up their financial horizons. Not only are cryptocurrencies a different asset class, but they are also an international financial railroad for Brazilians.
What prompted you to crypto?
In 2012, when I was working for a South Korean company, a friend told me about a type of “internet money” called Bitcoin that was used for “deep web transactions”. I became interested in the topic and started my own research.
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As with most people, I didn’t understand much at the time, even after reading the white paper. But when I started buying Bitcoin at the end of 2012, I was amazed that the money could be internationalized. Coming from Brazil, the idea that I could carry an asset denominated in US dollars that could be moved or sent anywhere was groundbreaking for me.
By 2014, I was convinced that bitcoin and cryptocurrency, in general, was going to be a big thing. This led me to focus on cryptocurrency for my master’s thesis at the University of London.
What are your hopes or goals for Transfero in a 5-10 year time horizon?
Transfero is expanding all over Latin America. Currently, we provide services in Brazil and Argentina, but our main goal is to be the main source of stablecoins and cash ramps for the region, and to operate a settlement network between emerging markets.
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