📌 Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil Establishes that Cryptocurrencies Can Be Seized for Debts
📍 In a historic decision, the Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil ruled that when funds are not available for seizure in the banking system, judges can directly send letters to cryptocurrency exchanges to investigate whether debtors possess crypto assets and seize them.
📍 Cryptocurrencies are being recognized and integrated into the international legal and economic system. The Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil (STJ) issued a historic decision establishing that crypto assets can be seized as payment for outstanding debts.
📍 The case, which now places the digital asset system in the spotlight of the judicial system, enables a new set of opportunities to recover debts from actors who did not use the traditional financial system to store funds.
📍 The court based its decision on the fact that cryptocurrencies are taxable assets, whose transactions must be reported to the Federal Revenue, and even though they are not legal tender, they can be used as a means of payment and store of value.
📍 However, in its decision, the entity recognizes that there are operational difficulties in seizing digital assets, as they can be moved out of regulated exchanges. In this sense, the court commented that a new system designed to facilitate this type of action is already being developed.
📌 The decision states that:
📍 The implementation of a system like this will undoubtedly make it simpler and faster to search for crypto assets belonging to the executed party and carry out the respective seizure of them.
📍 The appeal resolves a controversy created by a previous request to a court to seize cryptocurrency assets. Previously, the First Reserved Chamber of Business Law of the São Paulo Court of Justice denied this request, arguing that there is no regulation regarding the trading of these assets in Brazil.
📍 Likewise, it also established that allowing such searches would violate the financial confidentiality of the executed party without adding value to meet the creditors' demands.