Priced at Zero: How Brazil’s Méliuz Turned to Bitcoin to Escape a Treasury Trap

Finance Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Priced at Zero: How Brazil’s Méliuz Turned to Bitcoin to Escape a Treasury Trap The company adopted a bitcoin treasury plan by deploying a strategy inspired by Metaplanet, with 66% shareholder approval, to mitigate negative returns from government bonds. By Francisco Rodrigues | Edited by Aoyon Ashraf Nov 30, 2025, 7:00 p.m. Méliuz Taps Bitcoin Treasury Plan to Offset 22% Borrowing Costs (Midjourney/modified by CoinDesk) What to know : Méliuz, a Brazilian fintech firm, pivoted to bitcoin after discovering that its market value was zero, despite being profitable and debt-free. The company adopted a bitcoin treasury strategy, with 66% shareholder approval, to escape negative returns from government bonds. Méliuz employs a strategy inspired by Metaplanet, using derivatives to generate yield, while maintaining 80% of its bitcoin in cold storage. When Brazilian fintech firm Méliuz (CASH3) reviewed its balance sheet in late 2024, it found something startling: it was profitable, debt-free, and growing, yet the market had valued its business at zero. “If you excluded the cash on hand,” Diego Kolling, Head of Bitcoin Strategy at Méliuz, told CoinDesk at the Blockchain Conference Brasil 2025. “The company was worth nothing.” That cash, roughly R$250 million at the time, was mostly parked in government bonds. After taxes and inflation, returns were negative. “We were being confiscated,” he said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . So Méliuz did something radical for a Brazilian public company: it pivoted to bitcoin. The shift, Kolling said, was surprisingly smooth. The company’s shareholders overwhelmingly voted in favor of implementing a bitcoin treasury strategy when called to do so, with 66% of shareholders participating — the largest shareholder turnout in the company’s history. It did so not by issuing cheap, dollar-denominated debt to buy BTC — like many of its peers — but by leveraging share issuance and other strategies that now include derivatives. While leveraging the debt market can be a cheap form of financing, he said, this strategy doesn’t translate to emerging markets like Brazil, where benchmark interest rates hover near 15% and private borrowing often costs more than 20%, Kolling explained. “Strategy competes with 4% Fed rates,” he added. “We’re dealing with 22%.” The math simply doesn’t work. Méliuz is also leaning into a different playbook inspired by Japanese bitcoin treasury firm Metaplanet, which sells cash-secured puts to generate returns. Méliuz now leverages the same strategy, selling options to earn yield on capital set aside for buying BTC. It buys bitcoin with the income from yield generation, while maintaining the strategy with the principal. Kolling did not reveal the size of these operations for Méliuz, but made it clear that the company is in line with a hard cap of around 20% of BTC holdings being deployed in yield-generating strategies, and that the firm started testing these strategies with smaller amounts before deploying more capital. Méliuz, known for its cashback and financial services platform serving over 30 million registered users in Brazil, keeps 80% of its bitcoin in cold storage and uses only small portions to generate yield through derivatives, with potential future expansion into other strategies, such as Lightning or bitcoin-backed debt. But the motivation remains clear: not speculation, but survival. “Bitcoin became the escape hatch,” Kolling said, “when holding fiat meant melting our treasury faster than we could build it.” Exclusive Brazil Bitcoin Treasury Reserve Asset More For You Protocol Research: GoPlus Security By CoinDesk Research Nov 14, 2025 Commissioned by GoPlus What to know : As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M. GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month. Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B. View Full Report More For You Is the Bitcoin Digital Asset Treasury Model Broken? Architect Partners Says No By Will Canny , AI Boost | Edited by Aoyon Ashraf 5 hours ago A sharp market pullback has exposed which BTC-focused public companies can actually execute, and which were never built for volatility. What to know : Most bitcoin digital asset treasuries (DATs) aren’t broken, they’re simply untested. The majority of today’s DATs won’t survive five years, but a small cohort could outperform the market and become household names, according to Elliot Chun of Architect Partners. Consolidation is inevitable as teams with clear strategies outmaneuver those unable to communicate or execute, Chun said. 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