Brazil IN RFB 1,888/2019 Crypto Asset Reporting Regime

The instruction created an information-reporting obligation to the Secretaria Especial da Receita Federal do Brasil for operations involving “criptoativos.” It defined a crypto asset as a digital representation of value, denominated in its own unit of account, transferable electronically with cryptography and distributed-ledger technology, and not legal tender. It also defined a crypto-asset exchange broadly to include non-financial legal entities offering intermediation, trading, or custody services, including environments where users could buy and sell crypto assets with one another.

Reporting applied to exchanges domiciled in Brazil for tax purposes. It also applied to Brazilian-resident or Brazil-domiciled individuals and legal entities when operations were carried out through a foreign exchange or outside an exchange, but only when the monthly value of those operations, alone or together, exceeded R$30,000. This structure made the regime both platform-facing and taxpayer-facing, while preserving a threshold for the foreign-exchange and off-exchange reporting category.

• Covered operations included purchase and sale, exchange, donation, transfers to or from an exchange, temporary assignment or rental, payment in kind, issuance, and other transfers of crypto assets.
• Operation-level reporting included the date and type of operation, the parties, the crypto assets used, quantities, Brazilian-real values, and service fees. After IN RFB 1,899/2019, wallet-address details were generally required only if requested during a tax procedure.
• Monthly information was due by the last business day of the month following the month in which the covered operations occurred.
• Brazilian exchanges also had to report year-end balances for each user, including fiat balances, crypto-asset balances, and cost information where supplied by the user.

IN RFB 1,888/2019 required values expressed in foreign currency to be converted first into U.S. dollars and then into Brazilian reais, using the Banco Central do Brasil PTAX selling rate for the date of the operation or balance. It also required information to be transmitted through Receita systems and did not relieve filers from keeping the documents and systems from which reported data was extracted. For editorial purposes, these mechanics are best summarized as information-reporting infrastructure rather than as a standalone tax-rate rule. The regime did not itself create a comprehensive market-conduct or licensing framework for virtual-asset service providers; it operated as a federal tax information-reporting obligation.

IN RFB 1,888/2019 was amended in 2019 and remained the main Receita crypto reporting regime until its repeal under IN RFB 2,291/2025. The successor instruction created the Declaração de Criptoativos, or DeCripto, and its repeal provision for IN RFB 1,888/2019 produced effects from July 1, 2026. This profile should therefore be presented as a historical, repealed regime and linked editorially to any separate DeCripto profile covering the current reporting framework.

The instruction set monetary penalties for late filing, inaccurate or incomplete information, omissions, and failure to respond to Receita requests. It also stated that, without prejudice to applicable reporting penalties, Receita could communicate facts to the Ministério Público Federal where there were indications of crimes under Brazil’s anti-money-laundering law. The profile is informational only and does not provide legal, tax, compliance, investment, or trading advice.