Quick inflation of the Brazilian Real prompts more and more people in Brazil to use bitcoin.

The last months saw a rapid increase in bitcoin trade in Brazil, according to BitValor's information. The monthly volume of bitcoin transactions exceeded US$2.6 M while in May it amounted only to US$1.6 M. The record-breaking day was 19 August, when the daily volume of bitcoin trades reached US$180,000.

This increase looks even greater in Brazilian Reals because the purchasing power of the national currency is declining. The consumer price inflation in Brazil recently reached 9.5 percent annually. And though Brazilian media generally present cryptocurrencies in a negative way, people are becoming more interested in bitcoin.  

Interestingly, most bitcoin transactions do not exceed 5 BTC: 19% of total monthly value is formed by the transactions of less than 0.5 BTC, 17% of transaction values are between 0.5 and 1 BTC, and 42% between 1 and 5 BTC.

Bitcoin-accepting merchants are present in every important Brazilian city, with dozens of merchants in Rio de Janeiro, São Paolo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, and a record-breaking number in Aracaju, a resort city in north-eastern Brazil and a popular tourist destination, which has 54 bitcoin-accepting merchants for a population of 600,000. The start-up Rexbit, located in the city, offers bitcoin introductory courses to merchants and other professionals for just $7.  

However, according to Fabio Anjos, the founder of Rexbit, the situation is not yet bad enough to propel a mass bitcoin adoption. He says it will be accepted everywhere in Brazil only if the national currency is devalued on a daily basis:

Alexey Tereshchenko