Brazil has established itself as the Latin American country with the highest adoption of cryptoassets. Available statistics indicate that more than 90 percent of the country’s cryptocurrency transaction volume corresponds to stablecoins, increasingly used as an everyday payment instrument and as a means of settling foreign trade operations.
Alongside this leadership, in 2026 the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) adopted a measure that prohibits regulated institutions from using any cryptoasset, including stablecoins, for the settlement of international exchange operations. The measure has been interpreted by some observers as a contradiction. A closer analysis shows that it is a decision consistent with objectives of financial stability, monetary sovereignty, fiscal control, and crime prevention.
On April 30, 2026, the BCB published Resolution 561, which is set to take effect on October 1 of the same year. The rule provides that electronic foreign exchange service providers (eFX) and other institutions authorized to operate in the exchange market may not use cryptoassets of any kind to settle international transfers.
As of that date, all cross-border settlement conducted through regulated entities must be channeled through traditional foreign exchange mechanisms or through non-resident real-denominated accounts. The resolution does not alter the ability of individuals or legal entities to buy, sell, hold, or transfer stablecoins domestically. Nor does it prohibit a citizen from using their own cryptoassets to make a payment abroad outside the regulated system.
What it does is cut off the possibility that an authorized financial intermediary converts a client’s reais into a stablecoin and uses it as a vehicle for international settlement within its operational infrastructure. The restriction operates at the level of institutional settlement, not at the level of private holding or exchange.
The question that arises is why a country that has permitted and even fostered innovation with digital assets decides to limit one of their most widespread uses. The answer is not found in a generic hostility toward cryptocurrencies, but in four concrete concerns that the market’s evolution made increasingly difficult to ignore: the opacity of flows and money laundering risks, the erosion of monetary control and competition with the central bank’s digital currency, the loss of tax revenue, and the systemic volume that stablecoins have reached in a short period.
The first factor is traceability of funds
Stablecoins allow value to be moved between jurisdictions at low cost and in short timeframes, but they often do so outside the information channels that feed anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing systems. In Brazil, the use of stablecoins for trade-related payments, especially imports, has created a zone of limited visibility for supervisors. Official data indicate that more than 90 percent of crypto volume corresponds to stablecoins and that a significant proportion of that activity is directed at commercial payments.
The Financial Activities Control Council (COAF) and the BCB itself have warned that this opacity facilitates customs under-invoicing, tax evasion, money laundering, and the financing of illicit activities. Resolution 561 responds directly to this vulnerability: by requiring regulated international settlements to once again circulate through supervised rails, the authorities recover the ability to collect, cross-check, and report data in accordance with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing obligations.
The second reason is the defense of monetary sovereignty
The widespread use of stablecoins referenced to the United States dollar for everyday transactions and cross-border payments introduces a process of parallel dollarization. When an importer settles its external purchases with a stablecoin, the real is bypassed as legal tender, and the central bank loses the ability to monitor and manage variables such as the money supply, the exchange rate, and capital flows. This concern is not abstract.
The BCB is developing Drex, its central bank digital currency (CBDC), conceived as a tokenized representation of the real and designed to operate in an integrated manner with the regulated financial system.
Allowing private stablecoins, denominated in dollars, to consolidate as the default payment rail for a significant portion of international trade would have weakened the incentives for the adoption of Drex and would have fragmented the national payment system. By redirecting cross-border settlements toward formal exchange channels, the BCB reinforces the role of the real as the exclusive unit of account in regulated operations and creates more defined conditions for Drex to operate as the digital component of the sovereign currency.
The third element is fiscal
The settlement of imports via stablecoins through unofficial channels has been associated by Brazilian authorities with a significant loss of public revenue. The official estimate places the damage at more than 30 billion dollars annually, resulting from the under-declaration of goods entering the country whose payments are routed through digital avenues that do not leave the same documentary trail as the traditional banking system. That figure does not represent a marginal projection: it constitutes a material hole in the public accounts, equivalent to a substantial fraction of the federal budget.
In a context where Brazil is obligated to maintain fiscal discipline and broaden the tax base without raising rates, recovering the traceability of these operations becomes an economic policy priority. The restriction on institutional settlement with cryptoassets seeks precisely to close that avoidance route, making transactions visible to the tax and customs administration in order to enable the correct determination and collection of the corresponding taxes.
The fourth factor is the growth in operated volume
Data disclosed by the BCB show that between mid-2024 and mid-2025, Brazil received approximately 318.8 billion dollars in cryptoasset transactions, representing an increase of close to 250 percent compared to the previous annual period. Stablecoins account for about 90 percent of that flow. These are magnitudes that no longer correspond to a niche activity driven by speculation or technological curiosity, but to a payment system of systemic scale that operates alongside the formal financial infrastructure but outside its regulatory perimeter. The volume of payments dwarfs that of speculative activity, indicating that the primary function of cryptoassets in the Brazilian economy has shifted toward means of payment.
When a payment network reaches such dimensions without being subject to the same liquidity, solvency, and reporting requirements that govern banking institutions, regulators have a responsibility to intervene to mitigate the accumulated risks. The BCB’s action can be understood as the belated but necessary recognition that stablecoins have become a material component of the country’s payment infrastructure and, therefore, must be integrated within the regulatory perimeter, not left to operate in parallel indefinitely.
It is useful to place the 2026 restriction within a broader regulatory sequence. In November 2025, the BCB approved Resolutions 519, 520, and 521, through which it classified stablecoin transactions linked to payments as foreign exchange operations, explicitly placing them under its direct supervision.
Those norms defined the conceptual framework and drew the line of competence. Resolution 561 now adds the specific operational prohibition on the use of cryptoassets in the settlement of exchange operations processed by regulated institutions. This gradual sequence suggests a deliberate effort to build a coherent legal scaffolding before imposing specific limitations, which dispels the interpretation of a sudden or improvised ban.
Likewise, the authorities have indicated that the measures align with the standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on virtual assets and with the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), indicating the intention to keep the country integrated into the global financial architecture while adjusting its domestic regulations.
