Brazil’s largest lender becomes first bank to formalize crypto brokerage under new rules

Brazil's new digital-asset framework, built under the 2022 Virtual Assets Law, gives the central bank two entry routes: a full authorization process for dedicated virtual-asset service providers, and a lighter notification process for banks and brokers already licensed and supervised. Itau, Brazil's largest private bank, chose the second path, filing on Oct. 27, three days before the Oct. 30 cutoff set for institutions already running crypto operations before the rules took effect.

Itau's clients keep buying, selling and holding crypto through the bank exactly as before, but the activity now sits inside a filed, supervised perimeter rather than an informal one. Other licensed banks running similar desks face the same Oct. 30 deadline and must file or wind down. Standalone crypto exchanges and custodians get no such shortcut: they must pursue the fuller authorization track, a heavier compliance lift that smaller firms may struggle to match.

Two regulated categories now coexist under one law with different entry costs, and that asymmetry is worth watching rather than celebrating. A bank with existing capital rules, audit trails and a banking license clears the bar by notifying; a dedicated crypto firm with the same product must prove itself from scratch. Whether that reflects proportionate risk-based supervision or simply favors incumbents with banking charters is a fair question regulators have not yet had to answer publicly. (per crypto.news)

The Oct. 30 deadline is the immediate marker: which of Brazil's other major banks, Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, Santander Brasil, file notifications before it closes will show how widely banks have already built crypto desks ahead of regulation. After that date, the central bank's supervisory posture toward unlicensed activity, and any gap in enforcement between notified banks and still-unauthorized VASPs, will determine whether the two-track system holds or draws a formal legal challenge.