63 Firms Sought Brazil VASP Licenses by Central Bank's Oct 30 Deadline

63 Filings, No Official Count

Sixty-three companies and institutions had filed for authorization to operate as virtual asset service providers in Brazil when the application window closed on Oct 30, according to the private tracking tool Cainvest SPSAV Monitor, whose count of 62 filings rose to 63 with Bitget's application. The Central Bank of Brazil, which administers the licensing regime, has not published an official total, so the final tally of accepted applications is still open. An earlier count of roughly 40, circulated on Oct 29, blended license applications with regulatory notices and procedural steps, and a later list of 67 names likewise mixed applications with notifications from financial institutions, which is why none of the three figures reads as a clean comparison. Firms that filed on time may keep operating while the central bank reviews their paperwork, though they cannot add new service types during the review and a filing alone confers no authorization. Companies that skipped the deadline must stop providing virtual asset services within 30 days of its close. The central bank can take up to two years to answer any application, a horizon that makes entry from abroad a slow path for any firm not yet serving Brazilian customers. Tiago Severo, the crypto practice partner at Brazilian law firm Panucci, Severo e Nebias Advogados, tied the thin application count to compliance costs as much as capital requirements. Each licensee, he said, must send the central bank daily custody reports covering every client, monthly proof of reserves, three years of audited balance sheets, and an anti-money-laundering program able to withstand an audit. In his assessment many small platforms decided they could not carry that load. Larger institutions did apply: Binance and Itaú are among the filers, which concentrates customer custody with firms holding larger security budgets.

Regulation 520's 270-Day Transition

The regime behind the deadline was built earlier this year. The central bank's Regulation 520 took effect on Feb 2, 2026 and gave existing operators a 270-day transition window, while Instruction 704 fixed Oct 30 as the cutoff for submitting phase-one licensing documents. The rules divide virtual asset service providers into intermediation, custody and brokerage categories and attach customer protection, internal control and anti-money-laundering duties to each. The central bank's own guidance describes both the authorization process and the operating requirements licensees must meet. Sorting the counts takes care. Public tallies include banks and other institutions already licensed as financial firms that merely filed notices about crypto operations, so Coinbase's reported application and Itaú Unibanco's notification of brokerage and custody activity sit alongside genuine VASP filings in some lists. Exits went the other way. Digitra.com said it would close its Brazilian trading and custody services in an orderly wind-down without applying, Coinext shut its exchange after failing to meet the minimum capital requirement, and NovaDAX announced a phased end to its Brazilian exchange business. The three departures carried different stated causes, and no single reason covers the industry's retreat. Severo framed the core legal question as who provides the regulated service and who answers for the customer, a distinction the category system exists to settle. The licensed footprint will only become clear once the central bank finishes its reviews, for which no interim timetable has been published. The tracker behind the 63 figure is a private monitor rather than the regulator's own ledger, and the central bank's silence on a final count leaves room for revisions in both directions.

The Nov 6 Fiat Cutoff

The deadline's real force arrives on Nov 6. From that date, banks and payment institutions authorized by the central bank may not transact with, or support, virtual asset providers outside the regime, subject to the rule's exceptions, cutting unlicensed firms off from the fiat rails Brazilian customers actually use. The likely shape of the post-deadline market is layered: large filers such as Binance and Itaú act as infrastructure providers, while smaller firms lean on them to reach customers. For users weighing where balances move next, comparisons of the Best Crypto Exchanges serving Brazil are set to change quickly as licensed incumbents absorb the exiting firms' customers. What remains unresolved is how the continuing-operation clause for under-review applicants coexists with the banking restriction; the rule text alone does not settle it.