Brazil’s Bitcoin Treasury Revolution: What the World Can Learn

Brazil hasn’t followed El Salvador and put Bitcoin directly on its sovereign balance sheet. There’s no law forcing ministries or state-owned firms to buy BTC, and the central bank still holds traditional reserves like dollars and gold.

Yet on the ground, Bitcoin is quietly becoming a treasury asset in Latin America’s largest economy — just not in the way most people expect. Instead of a top-down sovereign bet, Brazil is building a bottom-up BTC treasury ecosystem: city initiatives, listed “Bitcoin treasury companies,” spot Bitcoin ETFs and smaller futures contracts on the B3 stock exchange, all under a tightening regulatory framework.

Corporate and City Treasuries Lead the Charge

The first key point: this is not a Brazilian sovereign Bitcoin strategy. The finance ministry and central bank have not announced BTC reserves. Instead, three actors are driving adoption:

1. Rio de Janeiro’s signal

In 2022, Rio de Janeiro’s mayor floated the idea of allocating 1% of the city’s reserves to crypto, putting municipal treasuries at the center of the Bitcoin conversation.

Even though the proposal hasn’t turned Rio into a “Brazilian El Salvador,” it did something important: it made holding crypto in public coffers a topic of mainstream policy debate.

2. Meliuz: Brazil’s first “Bitcoin treasury company”

Fast-growing fintech Méliuz has become the poster child for corporate BTC reserves in Brazil:

• In early 2025, the firm proposed making Bitcoin its main strategic treasury asset, subject to shareholder approval.
• It later launched a share offering that raised roughly 180 million reais ($32.4 million) explicitly to buy BTC, branding itself as the country’s first listed “Bitcoin treasury company.”

In other words, Méliuz is doing a Latin American take on the MicroStrategy playbook — but under Brazilian corporate law and disclosure rules.

3. OranjeBTC and the “public BTC balance sheet”

In October 2025, OranjeBTC, a Bitcoin-focused firm backed by big-name international investors, prepared to list on B3 with 3,650 BTC already on its balance sheet — more than $420 million at prevailing prices.

By listing equity backed by a large BTC treasury, OranjeBTC offers:

• A way for pension funds and conservative institutional investors to get Bitcoin exposure via a regulated stock.
• Another case study for auditors, regulators and boards on how to treat BTC as a long-term reserve asset.

Together, these moves mean Brazilian treasurers are already treating Bitcoin like a reserve asset, even if the central bank isn’t.

The Market Infrastructure Behind Brazil’s Bitcoin Pivot

Brazil’s approach isn’t just about bold companies. It’s also about building traditional market rails around BTC.

Latin America’s first spot Bitcoin ETF

Back in 2021, QR Asset’s QBTC11 became Latin America’s first spot Bitcoin ETF, listed on the São Paulo-based B3 exchange.

For corporate treasurers, this matters because:

• An ETF can be held like any other security, inside existing custodians and reporting systems.
• It avoids the operational risk of running in-house crypto wallets and private keys.

Instead of asking CFOs to become self-custody experts, Brazil gave them a familiar, auditor-friendly Bitcoin instrument.

Smaller, more precise BTC futures

In mid-2025, B3 went further, cutting the size of its Bitcoin futures contract from 0.1 BTC to 0.01 BTC, reducing the notional value by a factor of ten.

This has two big implications:

• Lower barrier to entry – contracts fall from roughly BRL 50,000 to BRL 5,000, inviting mid-sized firms and smaller treasury desks.
• Better hedging – treasurers can fine-tune hedges around their BTC exposure instead of using oversized contracts that don’t match their balance sheet.

Brazil is effectively saying: if you want BTC on your books, there’s a whole toolkit of regulated instruments ready for you.

Regulation: Tight Rules, Less Uncertainty

This corporate Bitcoin experiment sits inside an increasingly strict regulatory framework.

VASP rulebook from the central bank

In November 2025, Brazil’s central bank published long-awaited rules for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), extending anti–money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CFT), governance, and consumer-protection standards to crypto intermediaries. The rules kick in from February 2026.

Key points:

• Crypto-fiat conversions, especially involving fiat-pegged virtual assets, are treated as foreign-exchange operations.
• Exchanges and brokers must obtain authorization, maintain internal controls and meet transparency requirements on par with traditional finance. 

For treasury teams, these rules reduce operational risk. They can rely on licensed intermediaries and documented controls instead of bespoke arrangements with lightly regulated exchanges.

Why treasurers care

In a country where the real can swing sharply on politics and global risk sentiment, some Brazilian CFOs see a small BTC allocation as a hedge alongside dollars and local bonds.

The combination of:

• spot ETFs,
• right-sized futures, and
• a clear regulatory framework

means they can gain, size and hedge Bitcoin exposure using tools they already understand.

Risks — And How Brazil Is Managing Them

Brazil’s playbook doesn’t ignore crypto’s obvious risks; it tries to channel them into familiar risk-management systems.

• Volatility: Treasury mandates tend to cap BTC allocations and use smaller futures to hedge drawdowns. The new 0.01-BTC contract makes those hedges cheaper and more precise. 
• Operational risk: Instead of forcing everyone to master cold storage, Brazil leans on regulated ETFs, listed vehicles like OranjeBTC and licensed VASPs. 
• Legal clarity: A proposed bill would let financial institutions liquidate seized crypto, aligning it with FX and securities processes — another step toward treating BTC like any other asset class in enforcement. 
• Public optics: Listed companies such as Méliuz and OranjeBTC must disclose their BTC holdings, treasury strategy and risks in regular filings, which helps normalize “Bitcoin treasury” in boardrooms and regulators’ eyes. 

In short, Brazil is not pretending Bitcoin is risk-free; it’s trying to box that risk into frameworks treasurers and supervisors already use.

Lessons for Other Nations

The Cointelegraph analysis of Brazil’s approach boils it down to a simple sequence: write rules → launch simple products → add hedging tools → enforce disclosure.

As more countries debate crypto reserves — from El Salvador’s full-blown Bitcoin bet to the new U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve concept — Brazil offers a quieter, more incremental model: let markets and treasurers experiment first, but do it inside a robust, well-lit framework.