The Central Bank (BC) listened to the criticisms of the cryptocurrency market regarding the public consultation that dealt with the regulation of stablecoins and indicated that it would change the proposed rules. Regarding the most controversial point, the prohibition of withdrawing stablecoins to self-custody digital wallets, Eduardo Nogueira Liberato de Sousa, head of the Prudential and Exchange Regulation Department (Dereg) of the BC, said there is room for flexibility and that the final rule will probably come out quite differently in this regard.
“As we realize that service providers can monitor the quality of self-custody customers, we saw room for flexibility. The important thing is to hold the institution accountable for knowing the customer who does self-custody,” he stated.
According to Liberato, many public consultations are created with a nearly finished regulation, and collecting contributions serves only for some specific points. In the case of public consultation no. 111, which deals with operations with crypto-assets classified under the foreign exchange market, the idea would have been more to “explore possibilities,” with plenty of room for changes.
“In the case of this consultation on virtual assets in the foreign exchange market, it was more exploratory, to have a broader view of the market participants. We are dealing with issues from a new universe,” he stated at an event organized by the Brazilian Association of Tokenizing and Blockchain Companies (Abtoken) in Rio de Janeiro.
The Central Bank executive stated that he received many contributions on this point from associations and companies in the crypto-assets sector, so it has already been possible to structure a solution.
For other points, such as the freedom of access to the global order book of cryptocurrency exchanges, Liberato said he recognized the importance of the topic for greater market efficiency and called for more contributions from the private sector so that the Central Bank can improve the rules. “The global business book has an evaluation that we had not originally considered, and, throughout the contributions we received, we realized that the global trading book is very good for the quality of price formation,” he admitted.
For Rocelo Lopes, CEO of SmartPay and creator of the digital wallet Truther, this flexibility from the Central Bank is fundamental. “It is very welcome that the Central Bank is opening up for institutions like Abtoken to be able to dialogue and, even, contribute with more information on usability in daily life. And regarding the prohibition of self-custody, it could impact a class of users who need this type of wallet, as they do not have access to the national financial system,” he states.