SPAIN Law and Practice Contributed by: Alfonso López-Ibor Aliño, Olivia López-Ibor Jaume and Victoria Moreno Motilva, López-Ibor Abogados
• the digital euro project developed by MONEI, which successfully completed pilot tests with the European Central Bank in May 2025 for conditional payments, peer-to-peer transfers, e-commerce transactions, and point-of-sale payments. Over the next 12 months, key factors likely to impact blockchain adoption in Spain include the completion of the MiCA transitional regime on 1 July 2026, after which all CASPs must hold full MiCA authorisation to continue operating. In parallel, the Administrative Cooperation Directive (“DAC8”), which entered into force on 1 January 2026, imposes mandatory report- ing of crypto-asset transactions by service providers to tax authorities, with the first information exchanges expected to flow to the Spanish Tax Authority in 2027. Increased compliance and operational costs – par- ticularly regarding anti-money laundering, counter- terrorist financing, governance requirements, and new reporting obligations under CNMV Circular 2/2025 – will also shape the market. A further factor is the Euro- pean Commission’s proposal to consolidate the DLT Pilot Regime by removing its transitional nature and raising applicable thresholds to allow experimentation at a larger scale. Ongoing legal uncertainty in areas such as DeFi structuring, certain stablecoin models, and decentralised governance arrangements is also likely to influence product design and risk appetite, as MiCA does not comprehensively address all decen- tralised protocol configurations. In relation to intellectual property, blockchain is increasingly used as an evidentiary tool for times- tamping, provenance tracking, and supporting claims of authorship. Spanish courts may accept blockchain records as corroborative evidence, although they are not, in themselves, determinative of IP ownership. Key legal challenges persist in distinguishing token owner- ship from underlying IP rights. 1.1.2 Regulatory Sandbox Spain has an established regulatory sandbox frame- work under Law 7/2020, which provides a controlled environment for testing innovative financial products and services, including blockchain-based projects, under regulatory supervision. Access is not open to all applicants and requires prior authorisation by the
Spanish Treasury ( Secretaría General del Tesoro y Financiación Internacional ). Projects are selected based on criteria such as their capacity to enhance regulatory compliance, improve efficiency in financial markets or institutions, reduce costs, or deliver tangible benefits to end users of financial services. While not exclusively designed for blockchain initiatives, the sandbox has been used as a relevant entry point for fintech and distributed ledger technology-based solutions within a supervised test- ing environment. In December 2024, the Spanish government pub- lished a draft package of reforms aimed at modernis- ing the financial sandbox framework as part of the broader digitalisation of the financial sector. The pro- posed reforms seek to simplify access to the sand- box, eliminate the current cohort-based application system, streamline certain guarantee and procedural requirements, and facilitate the testing of increasingly complex technology-driven projects, including crypto- asset and blockchain-related initiatives. At EU level, the European Commission launched the pan-European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox in 2023 to promote legal certainty for blockchain pro- jects and regulators across the EU. In parallel, Law 28/2022 on the promotion of the start-up ecosystem (the “Start-Up Law”) may facilitate the controlled test- ing environment. 1.1.3 Regulation of Blockchain Technology The general approach of Spanish regulators towards blockchain-based industries can be characterised as cautiously supportive, with a clear focus on fostering innovation while ensuring financial stability and con- sumer protection. Regulatory policy is generally inno- vation-friendly, particularly through mechanisms such as the Spanish regulatory sandbox established under Law 7/2020, which allows blockchain and fintech pro- jects to be tested under supervisory oversight. At the same time, regulators maintain a risk-based approach, particularly in relation to crypto-asset activ- ities, with increasing alignment to the EU framework, including the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), and a strong emphasis on AML/CFT compli-
595 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook