Tether will invest $20 million in a strategic growth financing round for Mercado Bitcoin, Latin America's largest onchain financial services platform, the stablecoin issuer said in a statement published July 7.
The deal deepens Tether's exposure to Brazil at the same time its flagship stablecoin, USDT, is being pushed out of the European Union under new licensing rules.
Mercado Bitcoin, founded in 2013, has grown from a digital asset exchange into a full-stack financial platform spanning trading, tokenized investment products, credit and lending, stablecoin-powered payments and cross-border services. The company said it serves 4.5 million users, has issued more than R$2 billion ($370 million) in tokenized assets, and holds more than ten licenses across Brazil and Europe, including a Payment Institution license from Brazil's central bank, the Banco Central do Brasil.
"Mercado Bitcoin has built exactly that, a regulated, full-stack on-\chain financial platform serving millions of users across one of the world's most dynamic financial markets," said Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino in the statement.
Mercado Bitcoin chairman and CEO Roberto Dagnoni said the capital would support expansion of payments infrastructure, tokenized investment offerings, lending and on-chain capital markets, along with continued international growth.
The investment lands three days after the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA) reached its final transition deadline on July 1, requiring any stablecoin operating on a licensed EU exchange to hold an e-money token authorization backed by reserves largely held in European bank deposits. Tether never sought that authorization, and MiCA-licensed exchanges including Coinbase, Kraken and Crypto.com have removed USDT from their EU order books over the past eighteen months, with Revolut following suit ahead of the deadline.
Ardoino has publicly argued that MiCA's requirement to hold 60% of e-money token reserves in European bank deposits introduces its own risk to reserve safety, a position Tether has used to justify not pursuing the license.
The Mercado Bitcoin deal is the latest example of Tether directing capital toward markets outside the EU's regulatory perimeter. The company has also led a financing round of up to $1.4 billion for humanoid robotics firm NEURA Robotics and signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai's Multi Commodities Centre on tokenization, moves that sit alongside a broader pattern of expansion in Latin America, the Gulf and parts of Asia even as its stablecoin loses shelf space in Europe. Whether that regional pivot offsets the loss of the EU market for USDT trading volume remains an open question, though Brazil's rapidly developing tokenization market and Mercado Bitcoin's existing licensing footprint give Tether a regulated entry point into one of the region's largest crypto economies.
