(Bloomberg) -- Avenue Securities, the Miami-based brokerage that specializes in serving Brazilians investing in the U.S., plans to start trading cryptocurrencies next month.

“That is beyond a shadow of a doubt the project with the biggest demand from our clients,” Roberto Lee, Avenue’s chief executive officer and founder, said in an interview. “Our surveys show that about 15% of our almost 500,000 costumers will start trading cryptocurrencies on the first day we offer the service.”  

Founded in 2018, Avenue became fully operational as a brokerage in December 2019, offering middle-class and rich Brazilians digital investments including third-party funds and stock brokerage services in the U.S. The firm, which has about $2 billion under custody, tripled its headcount to 300 employees in the past year. 

Competitors are making similar moves. Banco Bradesco SA, Brazil’s second-biggest bank by market value, said in December it formed a partnership with the Miami-based fintech BCP Global to offer digital investments to upper-middle-class and rich Brazilians.

“Probably what we will see in 2022 is the arrival of big Brazilian competitors to our business, and we are going to answer that by becoming more complete, by offering not only a U.S. bank account but also more and more products,” Lee said. 

One such product will be no-fee trading for as many as 40 cryptocurrencies, according to Lee. The company will operate with eight liquidity providers, which Lee declined to name, with prices as much as 8% lower than those offered in reais in Brazil’s local markets. 

“The trading volume of cryptocurrencies in reais is still very thin compared to dollar volume, and that makes a difference in price formation,” he said. “People will really see a difference.” 

The idea is to eventually offer nonfungible tokens as well as so-called cryptocurrency staking, in which an investor earns a passive income by using certain cryptocurrencies to help verify transactions on a blockchain network.

One sign of how large the demand for blockchain assets is at Avenue: Last April 14, when the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc. went public, about 4,000 Brazilians opened accounts in a single day in order to buy the stock, which Lee said was a record at Avenue. 

One of the first investors at Avenue was Vectis Partners Holding SA, which continues to hold a stake. Vectis partners include Paulo Lemann, the son of billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann; Alexandre Aoude, Deutsche Bank AG’s former chief in Brazil; and Patrick O’Grady, a former XP Inc. partner. In August, Avenue received a $30 million second round of investments led by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Latin America Fund.

Avenue is the third brokerage Lee helped to found. He started with WinTrade Home Broker, one of the first online firms serving retail clients in Brazil. In 2010, he co-founded Clear Corretora de Titulos e Valores Mobiliarios, which was bought in 2014 by XP, Brazil’s biggest brokerage firm.

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