Financial institutions, payment institutions, and other entities authorized by the Banco Central do Brasil are prohibited, starting this Friday (6), from carrying out or facilitating operations in the virtual asset market whose counterparties are service providers without authorization to operate in the country, except for the exceptions provided for in the regulation.
The restriction is provided for in Article 91 of BCB Resolution No. 520, whose wording was amended by BCB Resolution No. 589, of September 23, 2026. The measure does not represent a general prohibition on cryptocurrency trading in Brazil, but establishes limits on operations carried out or facilitated by institutions supervised by the regulator.
Which institutions and operations are covered by the prohibition
The rule covers banks, payment institutions, and other institutions authorized by the Banco Central. Its scope is not limited to the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.
The sole paragraph of Article 91 includes trading, intermediation, and custody of virtual assets, foreign exchange operations, opening and maintaining payment accounts, and payment transactions, when these services are used to facilitate operations with counterparties covered by the restriction.
The resolution preserves the forms expressly authorized by the regulation itself. Article 88 also establishes a transition regime for providers that were already operating in the market: those that submit an authorization request within the deadline provided for may continue providing their services until the conclusion of the process, without taking on new types of activity during that period. This provision must be considered together with the restrictions of Article 91, without presuming an automatic exception for any operation.
The new wording of Article 91 took effect on October 1, 2026, but set November 6 as the start date of the prohibition. BCB Resolution No. 520, originally published in November 2025, had already been in force since February 2, 2026.
With the application of the restriction, supervised institutions must observe the regulatory status of their counterparties and the cases permitted by the rule before carrying out or facilitating operations involving virtual asset service providers.
