Corporate entities rushed into cryptocurrency trading on Sunday to safeguard their reserves from the outcome of a vote where incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly referred to as Lula, unexpectedly defeated Flávio Bolsonaro.
Business accounts accounted for 78% of activity on the Mercado Bitcoin exchange, with trading volume for Tether’s dollar-pegged token, USDT, climbing nearly 800% compared to the prior week and exceeding three times the mean of the four preceding Sundays. Bitcoin trading activity experienced an 865% jump relative to the previous Sunday, according to the platform.
Lula’s agenda of heightened public spending and an internet gambling ban that would decrease tax revenues raised fears that the nation’s budget would suffer under his leadership, placing further downward pressure on the real and keeping borrowing expenses elevated. Expanding debt, fresh fiscal commitments, and limited avenues for revenue enhancement would complicate that objective.
“For investors, this reinforces the logic of not relying only on the real,” Pedro Fontes, a research analyst at Mercado Bitcoin, wrote in an analysis shared with CoinDesk. “In this scenario of higher exchange rate pressure, stablecoins, such as USDT and USDC, are a simple way to dollarize part of your assets, at any time and starting from low amounts.”
A stronger opposition inside Congress could make efforts to tackle fiscal challenges more difficult, increasing the attractiveness of financial instruments whose valuations are determined internationally, he noted.
Corporate fears became reality the following day, when the primary Ibovespa equities gauge plummeted 14% for its worst daily drop since March 2020, while the greenback climbed over 8% against the real, marking its largest single-day jump since 1999.
Unexpected turnaround
The market reaction was quite different three weeks earlier, when Bolsonaro led Lula in the initial voting phase. The Ibovespa climbed 7.7% and the real strengthened by more than 4% against the dollar as market participants expected a change in leadership and stricter management of government expenditures.
Lula’s triumph positioned him as the initial presidential contender in modern Brazilian democratic history to achieve victory after trailing in the preliminary round. Even so, Brazilian enterprises maintained a cautious posture.
“The main driver of volume was companies seeking to protect their treasuries,” Mercado Bitcoin stated. “Retail customers were responsible for just 22% of trading volume, while MB’s corporate clients generated 78% of the total for Sunday.”
Corporate clients are known to hold up to 15% of their assets on the platform.
The wave of real-denominated transactions spread beyond Mercado Bitcoin. Figures from Biscoint, which follows digital asset rates and activity across 10 platforms including Binance and MB, show that trading turnover for USDT, the leading stablecoin, against the real grew 150% from the prior Sunday. Volume for USDC, the second-largest alternative, rose 318%.
The momentum continued into Monday, with combined turnover for USDT and USDC hitting 1.84 billion reais ($350 million), representing a 65% increase over the previous week, whereas bitcoin transactions grew greater than ninefold to reach 1,336 BTC.
These gains occurred while volumes declined elsewhere. On Binance, for example, bitcoin turnover against the real climbed 370%, while the global BTC/USDT pair dropped 25%.
Bitcoin appreciated 9.4% versus the real while dropping 0.2% against USDT, reflecting a realignment in the valuation of Brazil’s currency as traders responded to the vote.
Prediction markets miss
Expectations of a Bolsonaro win were similarly reflected in forecasting platforms. In an Oct. 24 overview, Kalshi estimated his probability of winning at 84%, even though its own report described polling as indicating an extremely tight contest.
Kalshi and Polymarket have both faced bans in Brazil since April.
Lula secured the runoff victory the following day, during an election featuring a disputed last-minute two-hour extension to voting hours granted by Lula’s former defense attorney.
“[Prediction markets] were trading the first-round result, poll headlines and the story built around them,” Einar Knobel, CEO and co-founder of sports data and technology company TxODDS, told CoinDesk in an emailed statement.
“I would not read this as a failure of prediction markets,” Knobel stated. “The mechanism did what it is designed to do with the information it was given.”
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/10/27/brazilian-companies-turned-to-stablecoins-on-election-day-to-dodge-a-currency-crash.
