Portuguese regulator to supervise cryptos

Portugal’s stock, equities and capital markets regulator, the CMVM, will have powers of direct supervision of ‘tokenised” assets.

It means the institution led by Luís Laginha de Sousa will have supervisory powers over virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies via a decentralised network.
“We expect that the CMVM will be the competent authority regarding the supervision of tokenised assets infrastructures”, said Portugal’s Finances minister Fernando Medina when asked by the business daily Negócios.
This is to meet the new EU regulation DLT Pilot Regime which part of a comprehensive package of measures (Digital Finance Package) introduced by the European Commission in 2020 to further enable and support the potential of digital finance in terms of innovation and competition, while mitigating associated potential risks.
The package also included a proposal on Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA), a proposal for Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and a proposal to clarify or amend certain related EU financial services rules, notably on retail payments; all portions of this package are already in force but had not been finalised for national legislation and a regulator had yet to be selected.
This delay in Portugal had been revealed by the Vice-President of the CMVM, Inês Drumond who explained that in order for the legislation to be fully met all that was missing was a national legal diploma.
Although EU regulations are not automatically transposed to Member States as is the case with EU directives, they can be adapted nationally.
In this case “in some aspects such as custody”, there needs to be a change to the Transferable Securities Code” she told the Congress of the Portuguese Communications Association (APDC) recently.
At present the CMVM merely has a role to warn investors but does not have specific powers over cryptoassets.
However, the Bank of Portugal can intervene under the terms of the capital laundering regime and check the register with crypto intermediaries.

Photo: Lusa, António Cotrim: Portugal’s Finance Minister, Fernando Medina at the recent annual CMVM conference in Lisbon.