Brazil's central bank says 30% of crypto applicants lack capital

At least 30% of the firms that applied to run a crypto exchange in Brazil do not hold the capital the country's new rules demand, the central bank's supervision director said this week, days after the licensing deadline passed.

Ailton Aquino, who directs supervision at the Banco Central do Brasil, said at an industry conference on 10 November that many applicants also left out the audited financial statements the rules require. His remarks were first reported by the Brazilian outlet Livecoins and picked up across regional crypto press.

Aquino did not name the firms. He gave no count of how many would be turned down. Brazil's central bank has not published a company-by-company list, so the exact split between pass and fail is still the regulator's to confirm.

How the deadline reshaped the market

Brazil built this regime over the past year. Its central bank published Resolutions 519 and 520 on 10 November 2025, and both took effect on 2 February 2026. Firms already trading got 270 days from that date to file for a license. That window closed on 30 October.

By the deadline, 120 virtual asset service providers had applied, according to figures Aquino cited. Companies that did not file must wind down within 30 days of the cutoff, which brings the end of this month into view. Since 6 November, banks have been barred from serving firms that skipped the process, cutting off the rails those businesses need to work.

The review itself is slow. Brazil's central bank has said authorization can take up to two years, and a firm cannot operate while it waits.

Resolution 521, a third measure, treats some crypto activity as foreign exchange and makes firms report those operations to the central bank from 4 May 2026. That change is aimed at stablecoins, which many Brazilians use to hold dollars.

Brazil is not alone in tightening the rules. Nigeria's central bank recently built its own licensing regime for stablecoins, part of a wider move by emerging-market regulators to pull crypto firms inside the formal system.

Where the capital bar bites

Money is the first filter. Under the framework, a provider must hold between 10.8 million and 37.2 million reais in capital, roughly 2 million to 7 million US dollars, depending on what it does and the risk it carries. Those amounts follow a joint resolution from the National Monetary Council.

That is a steep floor for a small trading desk. A broker running on thin margins and a handful of staff can clear compliance paperwork far more easily than it can show tens of millions of reais on its balance sheet. Aquino's point about missing audits cuts the same way. Audits cost money. They also take time, and a firm that cannot afford one struggles to prove it belongs in a regulated market.

Industry voices had warned the schedule was tight. Isabel Sica Longhi, head of regulation at Ripple, told the newspaper Valor in September that the hardest part was the sequencing, with the rules arriving all at once and fast. Smaller firms, she said, had little room to adjust before the clock ran out.

Providers fall into three types under the rules: intermediaries, custodians and brokers. Each carries its own capital level. Banks and existing brokerages can register to offer these services as well, which hands large institutions a head start over crypto-native startups.

Not every firm faced the full application. Existing banks and securities brokers can instead notify the central bank and file an independent technical certification, a lighter path that again favors established players over newcomers.

Who has already walked away

Some firms read the signs early. Bitnuvem, NovaDAX, Digitra and Coinext have all pulled out of the Brazilian market over the past year, and Bitso moved its retail business to Mercado Bitcoin rather than fight for its own license. Those exits began well before Aquino spoke.

Exchanges have retreated from other markets under regulatory pressure too, as when Binance set closure dates for users across four EU states. In Brazil, the pressure is the cost of staying.

Estimates of the fallout vary. Joao Paulo Oliveira, who founded the payments firm NoxPay, said he expects about half of the 120 applicants to be rejected in the first round. A September report in Valor put the survivors lower still, at roughly 10 licensed brokers out of nearly 200 then operating, or about 5%. Neither figure is official.

What to watch

Over the next few weeks, the shape of Brazil's legal crypto market will come into focus. Aquino said the central bank would work through the applications in order, and that firms falling short could still be rejected after review. What he did not give was a timeline for individual decisions.

Fewer licensed exchanges do not mean less crypto in Brazil. Its central bank kept self-custody legal, dropping an earlier proposal to restrict it, so Brazilians can still hold their own coins and move them between wallets. What changes is where they can legally buy and sell through a local, regulated company, and how many choices they will have when they do.