In July this year, after raising US$ 200 million (almost R$ 1.129 billion) under the leadership of the SoftBank fund, startup Mercado Bitcoin reached the value of US$ 2.1 billion (almost R$ 12 billion), which he coined it as the first unicorn dedicated to cryptocurrencies in Brazil.
In a year of record investments in technology in the country, 9 more Brazilian companies earned the nickname given to startups that reach a market value of US$ 1 billion (more than R$ 5.6 billion).
“Basically, more than the title, it’s what it represents”, says the company’s founder, Gustavo Chamati, in a videoconference interview. “We join a class of companies that are no longer bets, but have already consolidated, even though they are growing rapidly.”
Despite being born in 2013 —five years after the creation of bitcoin—, the startup began raising money from funds only in December 2020. This explains the premature billion-dollar pricing, already in series B.
According to Chamati, the earnings of the Bitcoin Market, which today is no longer limited to a single cryptoactive, grew five times this year compared to 2020. The startup started in 2021 with 180 employees and ends with almost 700, and bought three other companies in the sector. to form a holding company. Today they have payment institutions, cryptoactive learning platforms and a bitcoin news portal.
How did you get the news that you were a unicorn in July of this year? Several companies in the cryptoactive and blockchain market have grown rapidly in recent years, so it was no different for us. It is a consequence of the company’s funding and trajectory. Even because it grew very fast, our funding was already in the valuation of US$ 2.1 billion, that is, twice the value to become a unicorn. The unicorn status itself hasn’t changed, but the uptake has. Money makes a difference and it came because we needed it to accelerate our structuring.
In addition to material gains, did anything change in the team after achieving this milestone? No doubt. With the title of unicorn, we enter a class of companies that are no longer bets, but that have already consolidated, even though they are growing fast. Basically, more than the title, it is what it represents. And this is felt by the company as a whole and by the commercial partners. The conversation becomes at a different level, as they understand that someone recognized by the market evaluated the company, the team, the delivery capacity and was willing to invest in a significantly high valuation. It’s a very big validation.
How is your operation? We started as a bitcoin trading platform. The Bitcoin Marketplace does not sell anything. It is an operating platform for customers to meet, and we provide security for them to be able to negotiate. It’s basically a marketplace of digital assets structured in a Stock Exchange format. Customers deposit coins and place buy and sell orders.
Do you think about going international? Today we only work in Brazil and we have been working on expanding to other countries since the beginning of this year. In some, we have been negotiating our entry with a local player to gain knowledge of the market. In others, we are arriving through the purchase of other established companies.
And what are the countries? We look primarily at Mexico, Argentina and Chile, in addition to an operation in Europe.
How do you see the volume of investments in startups this year? Several experts say there is a financial bubble, especially in the blockchain sector. I always try to put things in perspective. Every disruption is always looked at with suspicion before it becomes reality. It was like that with the internet, with the cell phone, with video streaming, with MP3.
We have several examples from the last 30 years. If we try to transport ourselves to when these technologies were emerging, we heard the same suspicious speech. Most of the time, I don’t think it’s malicious, it’s a lack of knowledge.
I don’t see how a service like Pix could have been created if bitcoin hadn’t been invented back in 2008. Cryptocurrency technology is already accelerating change in the financial market as a whole.
I think it’s a lack of vision, deep down, about the technology’s potential. And in terms of liquidity, it is not an issue related to technology companies, it is a global issue. It was the way governments found to face the financial crisis, and there consequently there is more allocation of capital in both risk investing and entrepreneurship as a whole.
The companies that dominate the technology market today have left some behind, those that have failed to survive the competition. How do you shield yourselves from this? What we are going through today is significantly different from what happened with these industries.
There is a technological development component and a timing component. When we talk about blockchain and cryptoactives, it is an industry that has been developing globally, and the players who ended up becoming leaders around the world saw the change very early on, they positioned themselves, grew and has a good size to distribute technological changes for its user.
We are intrinsically linked to what is happening. We are often unable to do something because services appear that technology can offer and that Brazilian regulation, for example, does not allow. So we’ve been working on regulation to be able to find a way to offer services that technology allows but that Brazilian legislation still doesn’t understand.
Is an IPO a conversation for now? We even talked about the possibility of an IPO this year, but we ended up opting for the private round. There are concerns for a listed and open company that for a fast-growing group in an industry that is changing too fast are not suitable. I think the market still doesn’t understand what the cryptoactive industry is. Coinbase, which is listed in the US, continues to grow quarter-on-quarter, but stocks still vary based on the price of bitcoin, not what the company is delivering. I would say it’s not on the horizon for at least the next two years.
X-ray
Gustavo Chamati, 40
Founder of Mercado Bitcoin, a cryptoactive trading platform, the first in Brazil to conquer a market value of US$ 1 billion
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I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
