The Central Bank unveils a strategy to regulate Bitcoin and cryptocurrency brokers

The Central Bank (BC) released guidelines on Thursday (9) for the future regulation of bitcoin and cryptocurrency brokers in Brazil. Among the regulatory strategies presented to guide institutions are two resolutions, one of which focuses on the authorization process for Virtual Assets Services Providers (VASPs), which are providers of crypto services.

The provision on the guidelines that real estate agents must observe can be found in Law No. 14,748/2022. However, for the law to be effective, the Central Bank, the federal agency responsible for the proper functioning of the financial market as a whole in Brazil, must implement it through regulation.

Until the end of this month, the Central Bank will open public consultations in an unprecedented format solely to collect subsidies and information from players operating in the sector.

Paulo Portuguez, partner at Jantalia Advogados explains that the aim of the BC is to obtain information on business models and operational formats in order to prepare and present draft regulations by the end of the first half of 2024.

“This is the first draft regulation for this sector. In fact, it appears that BC will promote two public consultations, one just to gather information, and the other really focused on regulatory suggestions.” said the lawyer.

Three normative acts

In a presentation at the seminar, the Central Bank’s Financial System Regulation Department (Denor) outlined a regulatory strategy for regulating VASPs.

The original idea is to issue three normative laws, two resolutions and one normative institution. “The first resolution will concern the general concepts of VASPs, defining the scope of application and object of VASPs, definitions of concepts for the purposes of the standard, for example, what are the criteria and modalities of VASPs, which type of operation will can be exploited or not”Portuguez explained.

Furthermore, within this normative law, behavioral issues will also be addressed, such as minimum capital, institution rules and which institutions may or may not operate in this sector – as cryptocurrency companies currently do not yet require a license or any other permit to operate. in Brazil.

“This second resolution is expected to define how the authorization process will take place, something that is bureaucratic in nature and that in fact requires more granular details” said the lawyer, who also reinforced a normative instruction that falls under the perspective of the BC, with the aim of addressing issues related to procedures and documents that would be necessary in the daily functioning of VASPs to ensure the regular functioning of the market to keep .

Source: Live Coins

\