Celo is a leading carbon-negative Layer-1 protocol that has a rich ecosystem of Web3 applications. On January 27, the company confirmed the activation of an algorithmic, Brazilian Real-denominated stablecoin Celo Real (cREAL).
Notably, cREAL is the first stablecoin for mobile payments, beyond cEUR and Celo USD, which can be used for decentralized finance (DeFi) and centralized finance (CeFi) apps and services on the open Celo blockchain.
From today, clients can buy cREAL on the popular Brazil-based crypto exchanges, NovaDAX, FlowBTC, and Ripio, one of the biggest Latin American crypto exchanges. Coins and Bitfy are two majorly used crypto wallets that have also integrated cREAL. In that context, NovaDAX, Ripio, and Bitfy have already listed the CELO native asset.
Moreover, Celo’s ecosystem of DeFi projects that support cREAL include: Airswap, Celo.tax, Moola Market, Ubeswap, Mento.finance, Celo Terminal, Valora, Symmetric, Poof.cash, GoodGhosting, Heymate, and CeloWallet.app
Camila Rioja, Latam Lead, Celo Foundation, said:
“The rate of cryptocurrency adoption in high-growth markets—in particular Brazil—not only signals growing excitement for this new digital economy but the advance of real-world use cases. This traction, combined with Brazil’s regulatory, market, and community conditions, uniquely positions it as an environment where a project like Celo will thrive.”
Buy And Sell Using Celo Real
A significant advantage of using cREAL is that it enables users and clients to trade digital assets and transfer value quickly, cheaply, and more easily using their smartphones. The transaction speeds are 5 second block times with considerably low transaction fees of under 1 cent when compared to the fees that are charged on the other blockchains.
Furthermore, NovaDAX is now the first Brazilian exchange that offers prepaid crypto cards, with over 50,000 cardholders. The move enables cardholders to begin paying in cREAL for the daily goods and services. People can pay for utilities, buy groceries, and buy online products and services, and a lot more using Celo Real.
Thousands of Bitfy users can now top up cREAL within this mobile app to order food, pay bills, buy gift cards, and pay for goods and services at millions of merchants in the Cielo network, which is the biggest Brazilian debit and credit card, operator.
The users can buy and interact with the assets in the same way as they do with other supported assets in the Bitfy wallet, like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Unlike most of the other networks that need users to hold the native token for transactions, customers and merchants using this service do not have to hold Celo’s native digital asset (CELO) to transact or accept cREAL.
Earn Interest And Rewards With DeFi Projects
The Celo network of over 300 decentralized dApps enables the users to lend, trade, borrow and even earn rewards using their crypto assets.
By using supporting decentralized finance projects, like Ubeswap, the users can offer a liquidity pool with cREAL to access some high rewards, or even take out collateralized loans in cREAL through Moola Market. These are just a few of the opportunities available for the users to access DeFi using cREAL.
Advantages Of Algorithmic Stablecoins
cREAL is a decentralized, crypto-collateralized algorithmic stablecoin that is involved in tracking the Brazilian Real. Stablecoins can help in mitigating the risk of crypto volatility, which helps to guarantee that a transfer’s value tracks a fiat value when it is sent and delivered.
When compared with fiat-backed stablecoins, these algorithmic stablecoins that use a developed open-source, smart contract-based stability mechanism appear to maintain their value more efficiently. Since this type of stability mechanism is also quite transparent, the users are not subject to centralized credit or even counterparty risk.
As is the case with the Celo Dollar (cUSD) and Celo Euro (cEUR), the Celo Real (cREAL) is powered by Mento, the stability protocol on Celo, and supported by many digital assets within the Celo Reserve, like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Markus Franke, Partner, cLabs, said:
“The lack of transparency, high fees, and long transaction times associated with fiat-backed stablecoins has historically hampered the user experience. In contrast, cREAL can be exchanged trustlessly into other fiat currencies and digital assets within seconds—just with a mobile phone number—creating a pathway for people to use new financial products in their local communities.”
How cREAL Became Next Stablecoin To Launch On Celo
The unveiling of cREAL appears to coincide with a steep surge in crypto adoption in Brazil. In 2021, the trading volumes in Brazil were seen to increase by 2,247% year-over-year. Moreover, nearly 30% of the Brazilian population has invested or traded in crypto, which makes the South American nation one of the quickest growing crypto markets in that region.
Notably, Brazil has a burgeoning Celo ecosystem known as MOSS. MOSS is the biggest environmental platform globally, and it was the first to incorporate the Celo Reserve with natural-backed assets to assist in offsetting carbon blockchain-based emissions, and impactMarket with its universal basic income program has already delivered blockchain-based help to at least 10,000 beneficiaries in many parts of Brazil.
