Caio Brandão do Amaral

🇧🇷 "Stablecoins shouldn’t be treated like traditional FX. The future of global payments needs a new playbook." The future of global payments is increasingly shaped by stablecoins, local payment systems like Pix, and new open financial infrastructure. In this recent interview with Cointelegraph Brasil , Nkiru Uwaje shared some of the challenges and opportunities we are seeing in this space: 👉 “Brazil wants to protect currency controls and data sovereignty, but classifying stablecoins as foreign exchange operations creates silos and operational complexity for companies.” At MANSA, we are building towards a global layer of liquidity and interoperability connecting stablecoins with local payment systems like Pix, in a more efficient and secure way. We are very proud to contribute to this important conversation in Brazil — a market with huge potential to lead this transformation globally. Full article here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/dxqWxveY #Mansa #Stablecoins #CrossBorder #Pix #FutureOfPayments #Web3 #Fintech #Brazil

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🇧🇷 The World Doesn’t Care About Drex — And That’s Brazil’s Real Problem Brazil is launching one of the most advanced CBDC architectures in the world. But let’s be honest: No one outside the country is paying attention. This is not a tech failure. It’s a geopolitical blind spot. And unless Brazil wakes up, Drex risks becoming a beautifully engineered failure. 🧠 Genius Fact: You can’t force relevance in a world that isn’t looking your way. Brazil built Pix. Led Open Finance. Now it’s deploying Drex programmable money and tokenized assets. Sounds good? Here’s the harsh truth: 👉 No major Layer 1 or Layer 2 is building on Drex. 👉 Microsoft dropped out. 👉 EY dropped out. 👉 Circle, Aave, Chainlink? Nowhere near it. 👉 No oracle, no bridge, no DeFi protocol is integrating Drex. Why? Because Brazil isn’t seen as strategically important in the global financial stack. It’s not the U.S. dollar. It’s not Asia. It’s not a crypto hub. 🇺🇸 Meanwhile, the U.S. doesn’t even see Brazil as a strategic partner anymore. Trump’s renewed campaign brings: • 50% tariff threats on Brazilian goods • Open support for Bolsonaro, not Lula • Accusations that Pix is anti-competitive • Stablecoin expansion into LatAm — without Drex The message is loud and clear: “Brazil is not a player. It’s a wildcard.” 🧱 And Drex? It’s a silo. • Permissioned DLT • Controlled by banks • Access via regulatory approval • No bridges to Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos • No public chain composability While the world builds money that flows, Drex builds money that stays in a sandbox. 🔐 “Only Drex is regulated” “Only Drex is isolated.” Developers won’t build. Liquidity won’t move. Tokenization won’t scale. A digital fortress with no trade routes. 🪫 What we’re seeing is a CBDC with no gravity. No U.S. fintech wants it. No Asian or African market is asking for BRL. No stablecoin wants to pair with it. No bridge wants to support it. Just domestic policy weight. No global pull. 🧭 Brazil is building a CBDC. The world is building a network. Unless Drex connects, interoperates, and offers global utility — it will remain a local token in a disconnected system. The world isn’t watching. And that’s exactly the problem #CBDC #Pix #Drex #Stablecoins #Web3 #Brazil #DeFi #Tokenization #OpenFinance Digital Real #Pix #BACEN #FutureOfMoney #Interoperability

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EDUCATION: Globo Director of Product & Engineering Igor Maciel Macaubas interview I read with always great attention articles written by Nadine Krefetz, but this one is a master piece! Here’s a summary of the Streaming Media interview with Globo’s Director of Product & Engineering, Igor Maciel Macaubas: - Digital scale & portfolio: Globo serves ~90 million unique digital users monthly across products including Globoplay, Premiere, G1, ge, gshow, and Globo.com — making it one of Brazil’s largest digital media platforms. - Cloud migration strategy: Globo partnered with Google Cloud starting in 2021, migrating critical backend services to cloud-native architectures to support massive audience growth while maintaining API performance and autoscaling. - Hybrid infrastructure approach: While many services now run in the cloud, Globo maintains its own on-premise CDN with 270+ points of presence and ~20 Tbps capacity to control quality and reduce costs given Brazil’s geographic and connectivity challenges. - FinOps & cloud governance: One key lesson from cloud migration is the importance of detailed cost tracking — without granular FinOps, cloud bills can quickly become unpredictable. - Handling traffic surges: High-peak events like Big Brother Brasil can spike demand up to 200× in seconds. Globo manages this with aggressive load testing, predictive modeling, and highly scalable backend systems. - Low-latency live delivery: Globo optimized its live streaming pipeline to deliver sports content (e.g., World Cup) with 5–7 second end-to-end latency by refining encoding, packaging, and player stack. - Build vs. buy philosophy: Globo tends to build custom technology for core strategic components (e.g., microservices architecture) while using vendor or open-source solutions for commoditized functions like DRM, packaging, and analytics. - AI adoption: The company is exploring generative AI for development workflows and post-production (dubbing, subtitling, metadata enrichment) and plans future consumer-facing AI integrations. - Audience data & measurement: Globo unifies user identity across its properties via a customer identity platform and collects ~10 billion data events per day to power personalization, ads, and engagement metrics. - Content discovery & competition: Globo focuses on metadata quality, recommendations, and balanced algorithms to avoid “filter bubbles,” while recognizing that the biggest competitor for streaming isn’t other SVODs but consumer attention across apps, games, social media, and UGC platforms. https://lnkd.in/gff3xE_H

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(Versão em português nos comentários) Welcome to the team, Edwin Argoty! 🚀 Today we celebrate a new team member joining us at Addi, but with a twist: Edwin’s hiring and onboarding already reflect the new era of Agentic AI. We are no longer just writing code; we are orchestrating agents to build complex systems. At Addi, our AI adoption is deep and structural. We are transforming the SDLC through autonomous agents that support us across: - Ideation & Context: From product briefing to technical specs. - System Design: Validating architectural decisions with analytical agents. - Delivery Cycle: From assisted coding to release planning and proactive monitoring. As a Team Lead, this automation grants me something invaluable: focus. As The Pragmatic Programmer suggests, an engineer should constantly invest in their "knowledge portfolio" and tools. By automating repetitive tasks with Agentic AI, I can balance strategic leadership with hands-on architecture, maintaining both technical excellence and team velocity. We are thrilled to have you on this journey with us, Edwin! #AgenticAI #SoftwareEngineering #Leadership

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Texto excelente com o momento atual e quando havia muitos "runtime" de containers como Mesos, Docker, RKT, etc. Vale uma leitura. "From Docker to LangGraph: Why the agent framework shakeout is the container wars all over again. Learn to bet on protocols, not frameworks, in this new era." https://lnkd.in/dSdr6ytE

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🚀 Introducing ter-k8s-api: A Practical Project Integrating FastAPI, Kubernetes, and Infrastructure as Code 🚀 If you are looking to enhance your expertise in building, containerizing, and orchestrating modern applications, this project provides a comprehensive hands-on experience. 🔍 Project Highlights: A streamlined FastAPI service for customer management featuring complete CRUD operations. Interactive API documentation generated automatically with Swagger UI, facilitating endpoint testing and exploration. A simple web interface built with Jinja2 templates and static files for improved user experience. Dockerfile for containerizing the application to ensure consistent deployment across environments. OpenTofu modules defining Kubernetes infrastructure, enabling automated deployment of the API to a local cluster. Integrated monitoring using Prometheus and visualization dashboards with Grafana for real-time application health insights. Continuous Delivery automation through ArgoCD, optimizing deployment workflows. PowerShell scripts automating common development and deployment tasks to increase efficiency. 💡 Why Engage with ter-k8s-api? This project combines essential development and DevOps concepts in a single local setup, ideal for understanding end-to-end modern application workflows. Whether your goal is to advance your skills, build a professional portfolio, or explore industry-standard technologies, ter-k8s-api offers a valuable resource to differentiate yourself. 👉 Explore the repository, experiment, learn, and contribute: https://lnkd.in/dtEXig-9 Together, let’s shape the future of technology! ⚡

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Serbia has made very similar steps with IPS from the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) - a strong foundation for instant payments, 24/7, with fast settlement to the merchant’s account and the lowest acquiring costs on the market. One practical problem we still see in everyday retail is merchant adoption: many setups require extra hardware to scan or generate QR codes. That’s exactly what we simplified with Lakopay https://lakopay.rs/: - a static QR code at the checkout - scanned with a regular phone camera - no additional devices for the merchant And there’s another gap the original post hints at: how do you motivate people to pay via the new rail repeatedly? In our case, we solve this with post-payment interaction - right after the payment, the user can engage with loyalty mechanics (offers / discounts / bonuses), creating a feedback loop that drives repeat usage. OTP Group Banca Intesa Beograd Banka Poštanska štedionica UniCredit Bank Serbia NBS

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The Hidden Tax on Brazilian Seniority: Communication Debt. You are a Senior Engineer. Maybe Staff or Principal. In Brazil, you are a "King." You architect distributed systems, lead war rooms, and unblock entire departments. But when you apply for a $120k USD global role, the feedback is always the same: "Great technical depth, but we’re looking for someone with more 'senior' communication." Translation: Your logic is Senior, but your verbal interface is Junior. This is Communication Debt. And like technical debt, the longer you ignore it, the more it costs you. The Math of the Arbitrage Gap: Local Ceiling: R$ 18.000/mo. Global Floor: 8,000USD/mo( R 45.000). The difference—roughly R$ 320.000 per year—is the interest you are paying on that debt. You don't need a "teacher" to help you with "verb to be" or "travel vocabulary." You need a System Upgrade. You need to refactor your: ✅ Verbal Latency: Reducing the Time To First Byte (TTFB) when a CTO challenges your architecture. ✅ Narrative Syntax: Replacing passive "executor" verbs with high-authority "architect" logic. ✅ Stakeholder Diplomacy: Defending technical trade-offs without losing your executive presence. I don't offer "English classes." I run a 12-week Infrastructure Sprint for Senior IT professionals who are tired of being the smartest, lowest-paid person in the room. We use a Sandbox Environment  to crash your English safely, so you look perfect in Production (The Interview). Ready to run a system scan on your career? I’m opening 5 slots this week for a Free Prisma Diagnostic. No fluff. Just a technical audit of your verbal interface and a roadmap to close the 3.5x arbitrage gap. 👇 Click the link in the first comment to initialize your Diagnostic. #SoftwareEngineering #BackendEngineer #SystemDesign #RemoteWork #GlobalCareer #PrismaTechPro

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🌐 Pix 2.0: When the Regulator Becomes the Product Architect In Latin America, the word "regulation" is often synonymous with friction. But Brazil is the exception. Here, the Central Bank builds rails — not roadblocks. With Pix launched in 2020, Brazil redefined payments: 24/7 real-time transfers, free for users, with full national coverage. Within just 3 years, Pix became: ✅ The #1 method for P2P transfers ✅ A primary method for e-commerce and POS ✅ The infrastructure for government disbursements and tax collection Now, Pix 2.0 is coming — and it's not just upgrades. It’s a strategic shift that repositions Pix as a full alternative to cards and credit: 1️⃣ Guaranteed Pix Think government-backed BNPL. Merchants receive funds immediately; banks assume the credit risk. This is designed as a national-grade platform for retail and microcredit. 2️⃣ Automatic Pix Recurring billing via API. From utilities to subscriptions, this is Brazil’s answer to direct debit — with user-friendly, transparent opt-ins and no “hidden withdrawals”. 3️⃣ Global Pix Cross-border, real-time transfers. A pilot with Colombia is underway: fast, trackable, and low-cost. Essentially, SWIFT for the masses. 📌 The most important part? This is not a bank or fintech initiative. It’s a product roadmap designed and implemented by the Central Bank — with clear APIs, sandbox access, and legal infrastructure. In Brazil, the regulator is the product owner of the national payment layer. 👉 Why does it matter? Because in Latin America, regulation is no longer just a constraint — it's becoming the core design force of payments. Pix is the best case study for smart, forward-leaning regulation. — Volodymyr Samoylenko COO <LaFinteca> | Strategy, Infrastructure & Risk Building compliant, real-time rails in Latin America #Pix #Brazil #LatAm #Regulation #Payments #Fintech #BNPL #A2A #Infrastructure #GlobalPayments #DigitalRails #LaFinteca #SmartRegulation

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I was revisiting some of my early articles on crypto and stumbled upon this one, published back on January 23, 2020: https://lnkd.in/dcHwBcBV (in Portuguese). In it, I used a simple bootstrap simulation to generate return scenarios across different holding periods. The goal was to argue that crypto is better suited for long-term investments—showing that the longer the holding period, the less the outcome resembled a coin toss. This table below was extracted from the article and summarizes its results. I remember receiving feedback like: “Interesting exercise, but you’re clearly overestimating the odds of very high returns. A 10x in 5 years is highly unlikely, and you’re assigning it a 63% probability.” To be honest, I had my own doubts about those figures. I never took them at face value, given the oversimplified method used. Still, according to Yahoo Finance, Bitcoin was priced at $8,406.52 on the day the article was published. Five years later, it reached $103,960.17—a 12.4x increase. Sure, it was a lucky shot from the simplistic method I built. But the point of this post isn’t about statistical models—it's about how #crypto constantly forces us to recalibrate our mental models of what’s likely or not. Sometimes for worse, but most often for better outcomes.

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Reposting in English: How long does it take your team to integrate payments? If the answer is still "months or weeks", this video will interest you. With MCP + Cursor, developers connect to Yuno and enable more than 1,000 payment methods worldwide in about 5 minutes, something that could previously take 1–2 weeks. At a single point of integration, the result is speed gains without giving up control. In practice, this reduces the engineering backlog, accelerates entry into new markets, and puts the checkout to work with predictability, freeing up team time to focus on the product and customer experience. In the video, we show the flow from setup to approved payment and how to activate providers and methods in a few steps. Do you want to take this flow to your company? Call me to schedule a demo! #Yuno #PaymentOrchestration #DevExperience #Ecommerce

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🇧🇷 Brazil’s Pix payment system now processes more transactions than Visa and Mastercard combined 🤯 According to Banco Central do Brasil, Pix handled 224+ million transactions in a single day (https://lnkd.in/dCWywgwp), overtaking the combined domestic volumes of Visa and Mastercard. Let’s put that into context. Pix launched in November 2020. In under five years, it became the default payment method for more than 150 million Brazilians, roughly 70% (❗️) of the population. It’s: • Instant • 24/7 • Free for consumers • Near-zero cost for merchants • Mandatory for large banks That combination changed everything. For decades, Brazil’s merchants paid 2–5% per card transaction. Pix removed most of that friction overnight. For a street vendor in Recife or a small business in São Paulo, the math became obvious. But this isn’t just about transaction volume. Pix brought an estimated 71 million unbanked or underbanked Brazilians into the digital economy. That’s one of the largest financial inclusion shifts in modern history. And strategically, this is even bigger: A government-built rail is directly competing with — and outscaling — private global card networks. This raises a fundamental question for the global payments ecosystem: If public, low-cost, interoperable infrastructure can scale this fast… what does that mean for the long-term economics of interchange? Brazil may not just have built a payment system. It may have built a blueprint. Together with 🇮🇳 India’s UPI, this might be the most successful payments story of the past decade. What do you think? Will more central banks follow this path? Find this helpful? [ 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁 ] Anything to add about this subject? [𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁] Nice story, Marcel. Next! [ 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 ] Subscribe to my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/dzj26JSZ

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Brazilian fintech PicPay’s share offering is attracting strong investor interest. The firm’s transition from digital wallet to digital bank opens up new monetisation opportunities, but also new risks. PicPay has a large user base and high Pix transaction volume. But generates just a quarter of Nubank’s revenue per customer. Improving this metric will be a key driver of shareholder value creation. More details in our report: https://inam.ae/reports Ahmed Mostafa #PicPay #Nasdaq #IPO #Fintech #Monetisation #Pix #Nubank #PagBank #BankingRevolution #FinancialServices #InvestmentOpportunities #FinancialGrowth #FintechGrowth #DigitalWallet #OpenFinance #BankingInnovation #TechInvestments #RevenueGrowth #CreditRisk #FinancialTechnology #InvestmentNews #FinancialMarket #IPOWatch #DigitalTransformation #EmergingMarkets #BrazilFintech #TechIPO #FinancialInclusion #ConsumerFinance #FintechInvesting #MarketValuation

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🌎 Big news! PicPay, one of Brazil’s largest digital banks with 64M+ users, just launched its Global Account, powered by AstroPay Platform. Now, millions of Brazilians can open USD and EUR accounts, convert BRL instantly, and spend globally, all within the PicPay app. Together, we’re making global finance simpler, faster, and borderless. 🌐 👉 Read more: https://lnkd.in/ecbFppQB #AstroPay #PicPay #Fintech #GlobalAccount #BorderlessFinance #Innovation #CrossBorderPayments #BrazilFintech

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Brazil Fintech Launch Stalled by Address Verification API Failure **Brazil Fintech Launch Blocked by Address API Failure** Address verification API failures are halting Brazil fintech launches. When Brazil's address validation API returns inconsistent results or times out, it becomes a compliance blocker that stops customer onboarding and triggers Central Bank audits. **Critical Impact on KYC Compliance** Failed address checks break Brazil's mandatory "Cadastro de Cliente" flow, preventing risk tier assignment and account openings. This causes complete operational halts, not just increased manual review. **Audit & Scale Risks** Under pressure, teams make exceptions that create audit trails. At scale, latency spikes cause backlogs and partial data writes with null address fields - critical data integrity failures. **Common Failure Causes** - Assuming Brazil's address structure maps to single international APIs - Ignoring source reliability without fallbacks - Not validating against "Título de Eleitor" database **Solutions** Internal fixes fail when sources are unavailable. Systems need multi-source verification coordination with fallback logic to prevent single-point failures. **Key Takeaways:** Brazil's fragmented address data requires multi-source checks. Launching with failing APIs risks Central Bank audits, account freezes, and fines. Scale breaks verification without coordinated fallback logic. Replace APIs when failures stem from source unavailability.

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Brazil's Pix payment system has been picking pace. 80% of Brazil population are using PIX. Key reasons for its increased adoption: 1. Lower fees and charges compared to dominant card networks. Instrument wise fees: PIX ~0-0.33% CC ~2-3% DC ~1% 2. Instant settlements bank to bank transactions. T+1/2 days for merchant card settlements. 3. PIX is run by Central Bank of Brazil this ensures mandatory participation of national banks and universal interoperability. #pix #payments #brazil

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I've been tracking 🇧🇷 Brazil's crypto and payments ecosystem for a while. Spending the past week on the ground in São Paulo confirmed what the data already showed: this market is operating at a scale most people outside LATAM don't fully appreciate. Scale: 213.4M population. Continental market, every vertical you can think of. Stablecoin flows: Brazil received $318.8B in crypto value from mid-2024 to mid-2025. Nearly one-third of all LATAM activity. 91.8% of Brazilian crypto users hold stablecoins. This isn't speculation, it's payments, treasury, cross-border. Regulation is now operational: The Central Bank published Resolutions 519, 520, and 521 in November 2025. Framework went live February 2026 with a 270-day adaptation window for existing players (we're onboard with Ebury Bank). Stablecoins are explicitly captured under FX rules. This is MiCA-level clarity for LATAM. The "Brazil Stack" keeps compounding: Pix is on track for ~80B transactions in 2025 ($6.7 trillion in volume, +34% YoY). 93% of adults use it. Single-day record: 276.7M transactions in June 2025. Layer on Open Finance, digital identity, and Pix Automático for recurring payments (and you have infrastructure most markets won't match for years). The ecosystem depth speaks for itself: Nubank, Mercado Pago, PicPay, PagBank, XP Inc., BTG Pactual, plus a maturing crypto infrastructure layer across exchanges, custody, and on/off-ramps. Brazil has a word for things that only exist here: jabuticaba. Pix, the regulatory stack, the way crypto flows through the economy, much of it is jabuticaba. If you don't know what that means, you'll struggle to navigate this market efficiently. On our side, Ebury Bank is already a licensed VASP and processing stablecoin transfers for clients today (with BRL rails and non-resident account capabilities). If you're a crypto or fintech player without BRL rails, you're leaving one of the world's top 5 crypto markets on the table. To everyone I met this week: thank you. Grateful to Hugo Mathecowitsch Sofia Düesberg Lucas Giorgio Rostworowski Hector Fardin Marco Antongiovanni Caio Barbosa Cecília Almeida Rotiroti, MBA Silvio Pegado Normando Fay José Artur Ribeiro Eduardo Gonçalves and many more. The conversations were genuinely insightful and made the trip worth it beyond the data. And a huge shoutout to our Ebury Bank Brazil team, the local expertise and hustle here are what make it possible to actually deliver on the opportunity, not just talk about it. Brazil on your roadmap? Feel free to reach out ! Happy to share what we're seeing operationally.

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