Brazil’s main stock exchange B3 is expanding its range of crypto derivatives, Valor Econômico reported, citing comments by the B3 CEO. The stock exchange launched Bitcoin futures last April, which are trading around $5 billion a month. It wants to add Ethereum and Solana futures as well as Bitcoin options eventually.
According to the newspaper, Bitcoin futures are mainly used for intraday trading.
Beyond crypto, in December B3’s central securities depository (CSD) started to phase in an updated technology platform which incorporates some AI and blockchain. The CSD for variable income assets (ie. not fixed income), now enables market participants with a node on the CSD blockchain to gain access to transaction data in the depository in almost real time.
Meanwhile, the stock exchange has been leaning into digital assets for some time. It has a subsidiary, B3 Digitas, which is dedicated to digital asset technology. Hence, it provides the infrastructure to enable other institutions to enable cryptocurrency trading for their clients and supports more than twenty tokens. It also has a tokenization technology offering.
More recently B3 Digitas together with Banco B3 has been participating in the DREX central bank digital currency trials. They are involved two use cases. One is for digital bonds and the other relates to car finance. Given cars that get sold are often financed and hence subject to liens, today it’s awkward to get the finance released before the transaction can complete. With DREX, programmable payments should make the process easier.
