How Brazil is embracing “crypto without the chain”

As the central bank’s Drex project retreats from blockchain, stablecoins and private tokenisation platforms are filling the void.

Luiz Souza has watched real estate in Brazil’s southern island of Florianópolis explode over the past decade — and leave the brokers who sell it behind.

Of the 50 brokers who work at Buzz, the brokerage he runs, only three have been able to buy properties. The rest are sitting out a market that has surged 52% over the past five years.¹

He sees a solution in digital rails. Tokenisation, he argues, could allow brokers to buy fractional stakes in properties — as little as 1,000 reais ($200) monthly — without the need for down payments that are often out of their reach. 

“Tokenisation, if we could legally do it, would take the market to another level; it would open a massive market,” Souza told The Node. “People from lower-income classes could invest alongside wealthier investors.”

Real estate tokenisation was one of the use cases being explored by Brazil’s Central Bank (BCB) to include in Drex, the country’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). 

But the concept has faced pushback from Brazilian courts. At the same time, the BCB has stepped back from one of the world’s most ambitious attempts to integrate crypto infrastructure into everyday economic life, leaving the project’s near-term scope less certain.