Brazil’s crypto market moves billions of dollars a month and regulators are taking notice.
In a technical presentation at the Blockchain Conference Brazil, Flavio Correa Prado, auditor of Brazil’s tax authority, the Receita Federal, revealed that crypto transactions reported under existing rules have reached between $6 billion and $8 billion per month.
If current trends continue, that figure could rise to $9 billion a month by 2030, he said. Most of that volume comes from stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which now account for up to 90% of all reported transactions in some months. Once dominant, Bitcoin has become a supporting player as the country adopts stablecoins.
This shift towards stablecoins and the scale of volumes is driving a major shift in the way Brazil tracks crypto assets. The Federal Revenue is set to replace its existing crypto reporting rule (known as IN 1.888) with a new system called DeCripto, starting in July 2025.
DeCripto is based on the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), an international standard developed by the OECD and adopted by more than 60 countries. The framework enables the automatic exchange of tax information between jurisdictions, providing local authorities with access to data on offshore cryptocurrency transactions.
Under the new rules, exchanges must classify transactions into specific categories: crypto-to-fiat exchanges, crypto-to-crypto exchanges, retail payments over $50,000, transfers in and out of wallets, and moves to non-hosted wallets.
Data collection begins in January 2025. With a monthly flow of billions, mostly in dollar-pegged assets, the country’s tax authority is effectively beefing up oversight to match the scale of Brazil’s rapidly growing crypto economy.
These changes come as Brazil’s central bank introduces its most extensive set of crypto regulations yet.
The new framework creates a licensing regime for crypto service providers and brings together a wide range of activities under the country’s foreign exchange and capital market rules. Cryptocurrency companies will need to have between $2 million and $7 million in capital, depending on their type of business, and foreign companies serving Brazilian clients will need to establish a local entity.
Businesses that fail to meet the nine-month compliance deadline risk being banned from operating.
