#193: Bitcoin 2025 highlights; Central Bank walks back stablecoin self-custody ban
Plus: Meliuz to raise more fiat to buy BTC; Nubank raises trading fees in light of IOF tax
Olá pessoal!
Welcome back to Brazil Crypto Report for the week of May 26-30, 2025.
We’re wrapping up a wild week at Bitcoin Las Vegas, coupled with some unexpected adventures getting home — including an emergency landing in Baltimore that added two days to my travels (which is why I’m a day late sending this newsletter out)
🙏 Before we dive in, I want to shout out Avenia as our newest platform sponsor. More to come on them below, but TLDR is that our longtime friends at BRLA Digital are now Avenia. The rebrand reflects their new mandate of providing cross-border payment infrastructure across the Americas
This year’s Bitcoin Conference was vastly different than the last one I attended back in 2021. That edition featured a lot of party boys, toxic maximalism flexing, people having the same conversation on repeat about why bitcoin is awesome (it is awesome, but sometimes it’s nice to talk about other things, too).
The 2025 edition was a completely different experience.
Bitcoin hit a new all-time high right before the event
public companies are racing to become Michael Saylor/Strategy copycats
the Vice President of the US and the President’s sons were onsite talking about how they see bitcoin as key national security infrastructure
there’s tons of energy around bitcoin scaling solutions that bring programmability and DeFi natively to the network (and not just talking about garbage like Runes and Ordinals). This stuff wasn’t around in 2021.
Generally speaking, there was much less crazy toxic maximalist stuff and a lot more serious and “institutional” vibes
My default mental model in crypto has been to think of bitcoin as the super important but boring pet rock asset, while all the cool innovative stuff happens on Ethereum, Solana and other blockchains. As I return home, I’m seriously rethinking that assumption. It’s time to pay more attention to bitcoin for bitcoin’s sake.
Some highlights from the conference, in no particular order
J.D. Vance became the first U.S. Vice President to give an in-person address at a bitcoin event. He didn’t technically say anything that we didn’t already know, but for him to show up in-person for this and pledge his support to the bitcoin community after what we’ve experienced the last several years was an incredibly bullish signal.
👀 I interviewed the legendary Mike Benz for Roxom TV about his work documenting internet censorship in Brazil. Full version will come out in a few days, and it’s a banger.
I got to spend some quality time with Meliuz chairman Israel Salmen, aka the Michael Saylor of Brazil. Meliuz successfully converted itself into a Bitcoin Treasury Company earlier this month and is among the early members of the Bitcoin for Corporations movement.
Legendary gold bug and bitcoin hater Peter Schiff was onsite. He even bought a booth and personally manned the booth to troll bitcoin enthusiasts about how their investment is going to zero 😄. A lot of bitcoiners see him as the memetic “old man yelling at clouds”, but he was actually very pleasant and interesting to talk to.
🔎 What’s in BCR this week?
Central Bank says it is rethinking ban stablecoin self-custody
Itau economists: tax sports betting and crypto to offset IOF defeat
Meliuz looks to raise US$78 million to buy more bitcoin
SmartPay processes 666k USDT transactions in 24 hours
Nubank increases trading fees in light of new IOF tax
Thanks for reading and have a great week!
- AWS
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Central Bank says it is rethinking ban stablecoin self-custody
A representative of Brazil’s Central Bank signaled that the entity will change its controversial proposed rules regarding treatment of self-custodied stablecoins.
Eduardo Nogueira Liberato de Sousa, head of the bank’s Prudential and Exchange Regulation Department (DEREG), said that there is flexibility with regards to the proposed prohibition on stablecoin transfers to self-hosted wallets and that the final rule will probably look much different:
“As we realize that service providers can monitor the quality of the self-custody client, we saw room for flexibility. The important thing is to hold the institution accountable for getting to know the client who uses self-custody.”
The comments were made at an event in Rio de Janeiro hosted by trade group ABToken.
Liberato explained that the Public Consultation 111, which addressed crypto assets in the context of foreign exchange, was intended to “explore possibilities” and bake in room for change:
“In the case of this consultation on virtual assets in the foreign exchange market, it was more exploratory, to have a more general view of market participants. We are dealing with issues from a new universe.”
He also responded favorably to industry concerns that the bank’s proposed rules would cut Brazil off from global stablecoin orderbooks — a point that big exchanges like Binance and OKX warn would be harmful to Brazilian customers.
“The global order book has an assessment that we had not originally considered, and, throughout the contributions we received, we saw that the global trading book is very good for the quality of price formation.”
Valor BlockTrends BlockNews CriptoFacil
Itau economists: tax sports betting and crypto to offset IOF defeat
Two of Itau’s top economists are proposing that the government offset revenue lost when its proposed IOF tax increase was defeated last week by taxing sports betting and cryptocurrency transactions.
Mario Mesquita, chief economist at Itau, argued:
"The fact of life in Brazil is that there are many people who have become fans of sports betting. I don't see why sports betting can't be taxed like cigarettes or drinks. This could be an important source of revenue.”
He added that the portion of the IOF tax increase that survived doesn’t include cryptocurrencies, which is a distortion:
"The ideal would be to have no IOF, but it doesn't seem to make sense to leave this segment exempt since it will tax the others.”
Fellow Itau economist Peter Schneider elaborated:
"The ideal compensation on the revenue side is to return to an agenda of reducing distortions and inefficiencies, as in the case of cryptocurrencies, which are not taxed, but travel credit cards are, and money transfers are.”
Valor Exame Portal do Bitcoin CriptoFacil
Meliuz looks to raise US$78 million to buy more bitcoin
The Brazilian fintech-turned Bitcoin Treasury Company wants to raise as much as R$450 million (US$78 million) through a public share offering to buy more bitcoin.
The offering was announced in a securities filing on Friday and consists of an offering of 17 million common shares, with the possibility of expanding to 51 million depending on demand.
Participating investors, mainly professionals from Brazil, will receive a package of free subscription warrants that allow them to buy additional stock at fixed prices in the future.
The company currently holds 320.2 bitcoins.
SmartPay processes 666k USDT transactions in 24 hours
Rocelo Lopes, CEO of SmartPay — known for its Truther Pix/USDT app, revealed that the platform processed more than 666,000 USDT in the previous 24 hours.
The surge coincided with the news that the government would be hiking the IOF tax on remittances, a trend that figures to propel stablecoin usage.
Rocelo explained:
“It is a very significant number, we still do not know exactly what drove this increase, but it may be linked to the increase in the IOF or the growth of remittances with USDT.”
Nubank increases trading fees in light of new IOF tax
Digital bank Nubank raised crypto trading fees in its app in light of new IOF financial transactions tax rules from the Brazilian government. The app now features 29 cryptocurrencies available for trading. The new fee structure is as follows:
For clients who purchased or sold more than R$10,000 in the prior 45 days, fees will increase from 0.2% to 0.6% for clients
Users who trade between R$2,000 and R$10,000 will see their rates increase from 0.4% to 0.8%.
Users moving between R$100 and R$2,000 during that period will be bumped from 0.6% to 1%
Fees for clients with volume less than R$100 will increase from 0.8% to 1.2%
🗞Brazil Crypto News Rundown
📈 Markets
Stablecoin payments infrastructure company Conduit announced a US$36 million investment round, with Brazil as a key strategic focus. The company currently operates with 14 different currencies in nine countries. (Valor) (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Fintech startup Bloxs introduced a platform called Bloxs Workspace that uses blockchain to connect institutional investors with primary offers of digitized financial products. Felipe Souto, founder and CEO, said the goal is to increase and simplify access to smaller offerings that are difficult for large banks and brokerages to distribute. He explained:
“It is difficult for a bank to stop doing a BRL 1 billion operation and do one of BRL 20 million. We understand that technology is starting to fill this gap in the small/middle market, for operations of up to BRL 100 million.” (Valor)
📲 Adoption
Paulo Passoni, partner at Valor Capital, argues that blockchain is becoming Brazil’s main export. He said:
“I think Brazil will export blockchain. The country is the world's laboratory for large-scale testing of blockchains as infrastructure for tokenizing real assets.” (Bloomberg Linea)
Banco do Brazil expanded the use of automatic Pix to all its customers for use in recurring payments like water bills, electricity bills and subscription services. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Tools for Humanity announced the appointment of Juliana Felippe as its new general director for Brazil. She previously worked at Transfero, Paxos and Linkedin. (BlockNews)
Google confirmed its participation in the Drex pilot project, specifically on projects focusing on asset management, process automation and data infrastructure. (CriptoFacil)
Expanding in Brazil’s public sector is a key priority for Frederick Gregaard, CEO of Cardano Foundatin. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
The average Brazilian has to work 149 days a year at minimum just to meet his tax obligations. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Livecoins reports that “Pharaoh of Bitcoins” Glaidson Acacio dos Santos was storing passwords to his hardware wallets on physical pieces of paper near the devices.
Tether has 18 current job openings in Brazil. (Livecoins)
CVM and Fenasbac are teaming up to launch a new acceleration program called LEAP focused on blockchain, tokenization and sustainability. (Livecoins) (BlockNews)
🏛 Policy, Regulation and Enforcement
Federal Police launched the second phase of Operation Fantasos investigating the Trade Coin Club financial pyramid. Authorities executed five search and seizure warrants and froze R$1.5 billion in assets. (Portal do Bitcoin) (CoinTelegraph Brasil) (CriptoFacil)
Congressman Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Bragança criticized the taxation of stablecoins (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Alcinei Rodrigues, director of Standards of the National Superintendence of Supplementary Pensions (PREVIC), defended the organization’s decision to prohibit cryptocurrencies in private pension funds in the country. He said that the regulator has come under lots of pressure from the industry to allow these assets.
“And look, we were pressured, ANBIMA, everywhere they went to pressure [to allow cryptocurrencies]. Not this, we vetoed it.” (Livecoins)
A Floripa-based financial pyramid that racked up R$2.6 million in losses for clients is being investigated by the local public prosecutor’s office. (Portal do Bitcoin)
A hacker accused of stealing cryptocurrencies and airline miles was caught red-handed in the city of Luziania in Goias, with police entering his home while he was committing another crime. (Portal do Bitcoin) (Livecoins)
A Sao Paulo lawyer who helps victims of scams is being investigated for running a financial pyramid using cryptocurrencies. (Portal do Bitcoin)
The Unick Forex pyramid involving forex and cryptocurrencies has resurfaced with a new guise and direction, with more than 6,000 members in a Telegram group dedicated to publicizing the scheme. (Portal do Bitcoin)
Federal Deputy Rafael Prudente is proposing adoption of a blockchain system that would be make it possible to open a company in less than 2 days. (CoinTelegraph Brasil)
Senator Jorge Kajuru of Goias introduced legislation to amend Brazil’s cryptocurrency law to include provisions for crimes like insider trading and market manipulation. (Livecoins) (CriptoFacil)
A Sao Paulo woman sent R$17,000 in cryptocurrency to a scammer who presented himself as an American soldier on a mission in Israel. (Livecoins)