Hey, everyone. I'm Jensen Assy. This is Markets Outlook on CoinDesk. This episode comes to you from

Stellary Meridian, 2025 in Rio Dijanero, Brazil.

It's one of Brazil's leading voices on the intersection of law, technology and society as the founder

of the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio,

he is advising Brazil's central bank on the creation of DREX.

He also connects this local expertise with a global perspective as a board member of the Stellar Development Foundation.

Rinaldo Lemos, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ronaldo.

Hi.

All right. We haven't talked at all about DREx on the show, and so I'm really excited that we

are going to wrap it up by talking about it. ITS has been working with the Central Bank on Drex.

This is Brazil's central bank digital currency. Tell us a little bit about the progress that's

been made here and what's driving the central bank to launch this?

Absolutely.

So Brazil has been very innovative in terms of, you know, changing finance.

And the pillars of this innovation are picks, which I think everyone gets to know.

It's a payment system very well designed that allows for instant payments

in Brazil at no cost for the end user. But the second pillar is actually Drex, which is the

real digital, the digital version of the Brazilian currency.

And the important thing about Drex is that it's programmable.

So the idea is not only to release a digital version of the currency,

...