New crypto regulation puts pressure on Brazilian fintechs

The Central Bank’s new rules for digital asset service providers—which bring crypto platforms’ regulatory requirements in line with those already applied to brokerages and securities dealers—could end up pushing fintechs and early-stage startups out of the market, industry experts say. Central Bank rules begin overhaul of Brazil’s crypto market Crypto firms underestimated Central Bank regulatory demands Officials propose treating crypto as FX for tax purposes The general opinion is that the Central Bank has “raised the regulatory bar” because it sees real risk in this newly supervised market. At the same time, the new framework nudges traditional finance and crypto closer together, opening the door to innovative products that blend services from both worlds. Bruno Samora, chief product officer at Matera, calls the new resolution a turning point for Brazilian consumers and for the future of payments. “For retail investors, this is a watershed moment—exchanges will now have to meet the same standards for compliance, governance and risk management as the big banks. It clears the way for a unified financial experience,” Samora said. He expects it won’t be long before everyday users can manage traditional money, stablecoins, tokenized assets and crypto all from the same checking account and banking app, moving between them as easily as they already move money with Pix. “For that all-in-one account to work seamlessly, banks are quietly retooling their systems behind the scenes. The real technical challenge these days isn’t building a new app—it’s modernizing core banking infrastructure so it can settle multiple payment rails at once,” he said. But Nicole Dyskant, founder of startup RegDoor and a legal expert in crypto regulation, believes the Central Bank as having raised the regulatory bar in a way that will hit smaller digital asset platforms hardest. Nicole Dyskant Divulgação “Beyond setting a high bar that’s going to make life harder for small and midsized players, putting providers into Segment S3 initially—with a later move to S4 [under the Central Bank’s segmentation framework]—makes early-stage supervision easier for the regulator and closes off room for regulatory arbitrage,” she said. “The market already knew the Central Bank would eventually apply its full prudential rulebook here, and that it views digital assets as a genuinely risky business—including risks the regulator itself doesn’t fully understand yet.” According to Dyskant, requiring every provider to start in Segment 3 and migrate by 2028 regardless of size adds an extra layer of complexity for firms in the space. By barring virtual asset providers from qualifying for the lighter-touch Segment 5, she said, the Central Bank is signaling plainly that it doesn’t see this business as compatible with a lighter regulatory load. “The message is simple: even a small virtual asset provider has to meet a higher baseline for capital, controls and governance, because of the nature of the business itself”, she said. “The flip side is that smaller and midsized firms might argue the Central Bank, by flattening everyone into the same segmentation, is treating unequal players as if they were equal. But from a regulatory standpoint, as I said, that’s an understandable call,” she added.