By
Chimamanda U. Martha
May 14th, 2024
The Nucoin will be available to Nubanl’s 70 million customers across Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. Famed investor Warren Buffett holds a major stake in Nubank.
On Wednesday, October 19, Nubank, the largest Brazilian digital bank by market value, announced its plans to launch its native crypto next year. Dubbed Nucoin, this crypto will be available in three regions namely Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
Nubank said that its cryptocurrency will be available to all of its 70 million customers in the first half of 2023. The banking giant calls Nucoin “a new way to recognize customer loyalty and encourage engagement with Nubank products”.
Nubank said that it will freely distribute this crypto while offering several perks and discounts. Fernando Czapski, general manager for Nucoin at Nubank, said:
“The project is another step ahead in our belief in the transformative potential of blockchain technology and to democratize it even more, going beyond the purchase, sale and maintenance of cryptocurrencies in the Nu app. We are opening a door to the future. Nucoin is a new way to recognize customer loyalty and encourage engagement with Nubank products.”
It was just last year that digital bank Nubank went public. Famed investor Warren Buffett has been among the key investors in Nubank. In June 2021, Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway took a $500 million stake in Nubank.
During the same time last year, Nubank also launched its crypto trading platform while reaching one million customers in just 30 days.
Nubank Crypto Will Run on the Polygon Blockchain
Nubank said that its native cryptocurrency will run atop the Polygon blockchain network, a Layer-2 scalability platform for the Ethereum blockchain network. As per Polygon, the platform can support up to 1000s of transactions per second.
Nubank said that it would be inviting more than 2000 participants to test the token feature and share their feedback. Thus, it will adhere to some of the common practices in blockchain projects. “In this phase, more than feedback, the proposal is to explore a decentralized process of product creation, characteristic of Web3,” Nubank said.
Note that Nubank is not the first bank to adopt crypto practices. American banking giant JPMorgan has its own cryptocurrency JPMCoin, stablecoin maintaining a one-to-one peg to the USD. The banking giant uses JPMCoin to make instant cross-border settlements.
However, unlike JPMCoin, Nucoin’s price will fluctuate based on supply demand. As said, Nubank launched its crypto trading platform Nucripto last year offering to trade in public cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether.