Crypto: Itaú Unibanco, first bank in Brazil to report to the regulator

Three days before the ticket office closes. Itaú Unibanco has notified the Brazilian central bank of its cryptocurrency purchase, sale and custody activities. The country's largest private bank becomes the first to go under the new regime, whose regularization period ends on October 30. Its crypto offering has been running since December 2023 and provides access to fifteen assets, from bitcoin to a token backed by physical gold.

The Brazilian regulator has provided two entry points. The establishments he already supervises are content with a declaration to sell cryptocurrencies to their customers. Specialized platforms must submit a complete authorization file, examined on a case-by-case basis. Itaú Unibanco filed its statement on Tuesday.

This regime arises from Resolution BCB 520, taken pursuant to Law 14.478 of 2022 which entrusted the central bank with the supervision of virtual assets. The text imposes a minimum capital on virtual asset service providers (PSAV in local nomenclature). It also requires a strict separation between their own funds and the assets of their customers (a rule which we recall was lacking at FTX at the time of the collapse of November 2022).

Let's talk about the absent ones: neither DOGE nor the slightest memecoin in the Itaú window. The fifteen assets listed are limited to large capitalizations and two backed tokens, USDC and PAXG backed by gold. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Chainlink, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Avalanche, Uniswap, Aave, Polygon, Optimism and Arbitrum complete a catalog tailored for compliance more than for opportunity trading.

But Itaú Unibanco is far from occupying the land alone. Nubank has been selling bitcoin to its customers since 2022 and claims more than 100 million users in Latin America. BTG Pactual opened its Mynt platform before launching its own dollar-backed stablecoin. As for native players, Mercado Bitcoin and Foxbit are playing their regulatory survival on the same timetable, while Binance bought the local broker Sim;paul to obtain a license.

Stablecoins are crushing everything. Gabriel Galípolo estimates their share in Brazilian crypto transactions at almost 90%. The governor of the central bank first sees it as a hedge against the depreciation of the real. Resolution 521 now classifies transfers of stablecoins abroad as foreign exchange transactions, which requires intermediaries to declare them like any foreign currency transfer and closes a gray area that has been open for years.