Publicly traded Brazilian fintech company Méliuz has dubbed itself the South American's first Bitcoin treasury company after spending over $28 million on the cryptocurrency. 

Méliuz, a Brazilian household name that offers customers cashback coupons and trades on the country's oldest stock exchange (B3: CASH3), first announced its plans to buy Bitcoin in March, sending its stock soaring. 

And on Friday, after announcing it had snapped up 274.52 BTC for $28.4 billion, at an average price of $101,703 per virtual coin, its shares rocketed even more—recently trading up 26%. 

"Rather than just allocating part of its cash to Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation or currency devaluation, the company has repositioned its purpose to act by maximizing the amount of Bitcoin per share," the company said in a statement. 

Ray Nasser, who heads up the Latin America arm of trading firm BlockFills, told Decrypt that the company was copying Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) to help get shareholders more value for money. 

Méliuz went public in 2020 but had troubles—like many other Brazilian companies—amid the country’s high interest rates. 



"The company lost its relevance over the years, and its stock price went down," he said. "Although it made a turnaround in 2024, it's doing what Strategy is doing now, it's riding a hype. Bitcoin is an excellent reserve. It has something to do with its core business but not entirely."

He added: "This is a shift away from its core business but its stock has seen the hype and benefits. It's working out for them."

Bitcoin treasuries are companies that buy Bitcoin and allow investors to get exposure to the price of the cryptocurrency by buying the firm's stock. 

American software firm Strategy started buying Bitcoin in 2020 and has since sped up its buys as the price of its stock has rocketed. 

A number of other Nasdaq-listed companies in the U.S. are following suit to try, changing their business models to focus on Bitcoin accumulation. 

Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy, is the region's biggest digital asset market, and has the most amount of crypto ETFs. 

Edited by James Rubin

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。