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Has Brazil Invented the Future of Money?
In his last article, Paul Krugman cheers Pix, a digital payment system run by the central bank in Brazil 🇧🇷
I cheer Pix too—because it just onboarded 150 M Brazilians to the idea that money can move like WhatsApp messages. Now watch them ask: “Who owns the off-switch?” That’s crypto’s opening.
Paul Krugman says Brazil’s Pix shows centrally-run instant payments make crypto irrelevant. I read the same data and draw the opposite lesson.
Pix’s wild adoption—80 % of adults in three years—doesn’t refute crypto; it’s the best A/B test in monetary history.
People weren’t pining for a new currency; they were pining for instant, cheap, always-on settlement. Once the Central Bank gave them that UX, usage exploded. The takeaway: if you deliver the UX, people show up.
But the same numbers reveal the ceiling. Pix only works inside Brazil, only for Real, and only at the Central Bank’s pleasure.
A single press release already lowered night-time transfer limits “to fight fraud.” Try sending 200 BRL to a cousin in Paraguay: you’re back to 6 % FX and two-day correspondent banks.
Crypto’s pitch was never “we’ll beat Visa on speed today.” It’s “we’ll beat the off-switch tomorrow.”
Pix validated the demand curve; crypto still owns the supply curve of permissionless rails.
Every Pix user who now expects money to move like a text is one policy panic away from becoming a Lightning, USDC, or DAI user.
So celebrate Pix—it’s the greatest advertisement permissionless money ever had.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/has-brazil-invented-the-future-of 2 replies
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