Tether invests $20 million in Mercado Bitcoin as tokenized finance expands across Brazil and Latin America

Tether has put $20 million into Brazilian crypto platform Mercado Bitcoin, with the money aimed at expansion into tokenized assets, stablecoin payments, lending and other blockchain-based financial services across Latin America. For high-risk PSPs, the useful bit is not the headline number — it is that this is going into a regulated platform that already sits inside Brazil’s licensing framework and is moving beyond plain crypto trading.

1. Mercado Bitcoin said it has more than 4.5 million users and has issued more than 2 billion Brazilian reais, or about $370 million, worth of tokenized assets. Since launching in 2013, it has expanded into regulated financial services including tokenized assets, credit, stablecoin payments and cross-border services.
2. The company said it operates under nearly a dozen licenses across Brazil and Europe, including a payment institution license from Brazil’s central bank. For payment providers, that matters because the commercial story here is not just “crypto exchange”; it is a platform building financial infrastructure under multiple regulatory permissions.
3. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said Mercado Bitcoin has built one of Latin America’s most comprehensive regulated onchain financial platforms, pointing to its licensing, tokenization infrastructure and integrated financial services.
4. In February, Mercado Bitcoin said it had deployed more than $20 million in tokenized private credit on Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock. That is one more sign that the company’s tokenization business is not theoretical — it is already moving into specific credit products.
5. The investment fits Tether Investments’ broader strategy of backing companies building blockchain-based financial infrastructure. Tether issues USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin, with about $184 billion in circulation, and reported approximately $1.04 billion in net profit in the first quarter of 2026, which it is using for strategic investments.

Tether has been deploying that capital into adjacent rails as well: it joined a $134 million funding round for Stablecoin Development Corporation in April, invested in remittance platform LemFi in May to support USDT settlement for cross-border payments across Africa and Asia, and later announced plans with the Government of Georgia to launch a stablecoin pegged to the Georgian lari under the country’s digital asset framework.