PORTUGAL Law and Practice Contributed by: Nuno Lima da Luz and Tomás Gomes da Silva, Cuatrecasas
2. Regulation 2.1 Regulators and International Alignment Portugal’s most relevant regulators for crypto-assets are now explicitly designated for MiCA purposes. Under Law 69/2025, the BdP is the competent author- ity for (among other areas) supervision of MiCA Titles III and IV (asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens) and specific components of Title V (includ- ing, among others, the authorisation and notification process for CASPs and certain financial institutions), while the CMVM is competent for MiCA Titles II and VI (including market abuse and behavioural require- ments) and other specified components. Law 69/2025 also sets out co-operation duties and points of contact for cross-border administrative co-operation, which is particularly important because MiCA operates through home-state authorisation and EU passporting logic. Alongside financial regulators, data protection over- sight can be highly relevant for blockchain imple- mentations, and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued guidelines on processing personal data through blockchain technologies, reinforcing that GDPR compliance must be built into design choices. International alignment is clearest in AML/CFT. The EU “travel rule” Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 extends infor- mation-accompanying-transfer rules to crypto-asset transfers, aims at traceability, and explicitly states that it implements standards issued by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing. Portugal’s transitional MiCA execution rules expressly connect legacy VASP activ- ity to the application of Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 and to Portuguese AML law, treating certain entities as CASPs for those AML purposes during the transi- tion. In securities-market style areas (market integ- rity, conflict management, complaints handling), MiCA also reflects widely used International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO)-style principles, but the strongest documentary anchor within the permit- ted sources is the EU’s formalised, rule-based trans- position of FATF travel-rule expectations. 2.2 Crypto-Asset Regulatory Frameworks MiCA is the bespoke EU framework for crypto-assets that were previously not comprehensively regulated by existing EU financial services acts. The EUR-Lex
summary describes MiCA as establishing uniform rules for issuers and crypto-asset service provid- ers, including transparency/disclosure, authorisa- tion/supervision, governance, consumer protections, and market abuse measures. MiCA applies from 30 December 2024, with the stablecoin-focused Titles III and IV applying since 30 June 2024, which means that in Portugal the core EU crypto regulatory regime is already in force as of the date of this article. Portu- gal executed MiCA through Law 69/2025, which adds national supervisory architecture, procedures, and a sanctions regime. Characterisation and classification remain critical because MiCA is not meant to encompass traditional instruments that are already regulated elsewhere, and because certain tokens (notably ARTs and EMTs) trigger specialised authorisation and reserve/back- ing obligations. The BdP’s own MiCA implementa- tion page for ART/EMT issuance stresses that ARTs and EMTs are governed by MiCA Titles III and IV, and that offers/admissions of ARTs generally require an EU-established and authorised issuer (or a credit institution meeting specified conditions), while EMTs can only be offered by credit institutions or electronic money institutions subject to notification and white paper publication steps. At EU level, the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) have issued guidelines and standardised tests supporting consistent classi- fication of crypto-assets and requiring explanations or legal opinions to accompany certain white papers, which underscores that “what is this token?” is a regu- lated question, not a marketing question. Regulated activities under MiCA include both issu- ance/offer/admission processes and service provi- sion as a CASP, with a harmonised authorisation and passporting model. Portugal’s Law 69/2025 makes it a very serious administrative offence to provide crypto- asset services without authorisation and also penal- ises conduct that suggests a person is an authorised CASP when they are not. Prohibitions and constraints in practice therefore arise from (i) licensing perimeters and (ii) specific token-type requirements, rather than from an outright ban on crypto in Portugal, and the BdP has reiterated that crypto-assets are not prohibit- ed as such. Retail-professional segmentation exists in various MiCA concepts (for example, certain exemp-
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