PORTUGAL Law and Practice Contributed by: Nuno Lima da Luz and Tomás Gomes da Silva, Cuatrecasas
to-assets. MiCA is explicitly described as applying to issuers and service providers of crypto-assets that were “so far not regulated by other EU financial servic- es acts”, which implies that many tokenised securities and traditional instruments remain governed by the existing securities framework rather than by MiCA’s crypto-native perimeter. At the same time, MiCA- driven classification processes and standardised tests (including ESAs templates for explanations and legal opinions) highlight that tokenised products must be analysed carefully to determine whether they qualify as ART/EMT/other MiCA crypto-assets or instead as traditional regulated instruments. From a practical standpoint, tokenisation does not “de-regulate” an asset. If the token represents rights equivalent to shares, bonds, fund units, or other regu-
lated instruments, the tokenised form is likely to carry forward the regulatory obligations attached to that instrument class, including the investment services (custody, trading platform operation) related to them under MiFID II and the Portuguese Securities Code. Portugal’s Law 69/2025 also establishes mechanisms of co-operation between the BdP, the CMVM, and the ASF for legal qualification opinions on crypto-assets, which reflects institutional recognition that tokenisa- tion creates recurring classification questions with real supervisory consequences. In implementation, the primary compliance work is therefore to map the token’s legal nature, the service model, and the inves- tor/customer perimeter, and then to apply the appro- priate combination of traditional financial regulation, MiCA, AML travel-rule obligations, and consumer/ advertising standards.
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