LATIN AMERICA-WIDE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Carlos Rivas and Jose Rodríguez, Nodeman
XDC Network (49%) and XRP Ledger (31%), chosen explicitly for compliance hooks and settlement finality rather than DeFi composability. B3, Brazil’s primary exchange, is preparing a 24/7 RWA tokenisation platform, and Mercado Bitcoin announced plans to tokenise more than USD200 mil- lion in receivables, agribusiness credit, and private debt during 2025. On the DeFi side, Aave consoli- dated its share of stablecoin lending across Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, and cross‑border liquidity pools backed by tokenised debt instruments are emerging in Mexico and Colombia. Regulation hardens, but coherently Brazil’s BCB Resolutions 519, 520 and 521 became operational on 2 February 2026, establishing a full virtual asset service provider (VASP) authorisation regime with capital requirements of BRL10.8 million to BRL37.2 million, mandatory AML/CFT controls, and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Travel Rule for domestic transfers. BCB Instruction 701/2026 then sharpened the stablecoin parameter: any “fiat‑refer- enced virtual asset” must be fully backed by fiat or public debt, and any cross‑border stablecoin transfer is now formally a foreign exchange operation, pulling stablecoins into Brazil’s capital controls, reporting, and counterparty identification regimes.
Argentina took the opposite philosophical posture but reached a comparable operational outcome. Its National Securities Commission ( Comisión Nacional de Valores or CNV)’s General Resolution 1058/2025 created a VASP registry, with mandatory registration for VASPs by 31 December 2025. The Banco Central de la República Argentina is expected to lift its prohibi- tion on banks offering digital asset services in 2026, unlocking custody and trading at the country’s tier‑1 banks for the first time. Mexico continues to operate under the 2018 Fintech Law with CNBV and Banxico oversight and is moving towards a stablecoin‑specific framework, while Chile, Colombia and Peru converge on FATF‑aligned VASP regimes. Outlook During 2025 and 2026, Latin America became the proof point that blockchain-based business’s most durable use cases – dollar access, cheap remittanc- es, on‑chain credit, and tokenised RWAs – are daily infrastructure rather than narratives. El Salvador’s regulated stack, Brazil’s stablecoin‑denominated pay- ment economy, and Argentina’s institutional opening are converging into a continental‑scale digital‑asset stack built around utility, not speculation. The next 12 months will determine whether the region’s licensed venues can absorb the institutional capital this infra- structure is now structured to receive.
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