Gabriela Salazar Torres
Lawyer

Gabriela Salazar Torres is a legal strategist working where traditional finance meets emerging technology. She brings more than 30 years in the financial sector and over a decade focused specifically on fintech, blockchain, and virtual assets — a combination that has made her one of Mexico’s leading authorities on digital-asset regulation and innovation.

She is the founder of MoonCloud LegalTech, where she helps financial institutions and technology companies design governance and compliance frameworks for blockchain, virtual assets, and artificial intelligence. Her credentials span both fields: advanced specialized certifications in blockchain from the Blockchain Center of the University of Zurich and the Complutense University of Madrid, and certification as a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, placing her among the early specialists in AI governance and risk management.

An author and commentator on fintech, blockchain, securities and anti-money-laundering regulation in Mexico, Gabriela works on the legal architecture that will define the next phase of digital finance.

Federico Groenewold Rivas
Partner

Federico Groenewold is a partner at Muñoz Manzo y Ocampo (MMyO), a Mexican tax and legal advisory firm. His practice focuses on federal taxation, cross-border Mexico–U.S. transactions, M&A structuring, and tax due diligence, advising domestic and international clients across digital platforms, capital markets vehicles, real estate, and hospitality. He has a growing focus on the tax treatment of digital assets and the emerging crypto-asset reporting landscape.

He began his career in tax auditing at Arthur Andersen and spent nearly a decade in tax consulting before becoming a partner at MMyO in 2011. A Certified Public Accountant trained at the Universidad Iberoamericana, he combines technical tax depth with hands-on transactional experience and is a frequent commentator on Mexican tax developments.

Blockchain and Digital Assets – Mexico 2026

Mexico recognized virtual assets early, then built a perimeter to keep them at arm’s length. Now, 2025–2027 reforms in AML, tax transparency and tokenization are testing that perimeter for anyone structuring a digital asset business with a Mexican nexus.

Few jurisdictions have been as quietly consequential, or as misread, as Mexico. The 2018 Fintech Law made it one of the first Latin American countries to recognize virtual assets in primary legislation, but secondary regulation then kept them at a calculated distance from the regulated financial sector.

That tension (recognition and restraint) defines Mexico’s framework. The key question is not whether virtual assets are lawful; they are. It is where a given activity falls across financial, civil, commercial, procedural and tax law, and what that classification requires. Three developments now sharpen the issue: the 2025 AML reform, Mexico’s commitment to the OECD crypto tax transparency standard, and the rise of real-world asset tokenization.

Fintech Law

The starting point is definitional. Under Articles 30 to 32 of the Fintech Law, a virtual asset is an electronically recorded representation of value used as a means of payment and transferable only electronically. Three consequences follow: virtual assets are neither legal tender nor foreign currency; only CNBV authorized Financial Technology Institutions and credit institutions may operate with them; and even they need prior, specific Banxico authorization for eligible assets.

The gap between “cryptocurrency” and the statutory “virtual asset” matters. Mexican law is functional, not technological: it captures value used in payment regardless of the ledger or consensus design. Blockchain supplies integrity and auditability, but the law focuses on economic function — a point that becomes critical when the same token may fall into different legal categories.

If the Fintech Law opens the door, Banxico’s secondary regulation largely closes it through a “healthy distance” policy meant to shield the financial system from virtual asset volatility. Banxico permits credit and fintech institutions to use virtual assets only for internal, back-office or risk management purposes, and only with case-by-case authorization. Public facing services (exchange, transfer and custody) remain outside the allowed framework.

As of this review, no generally public Banxico authorization under this regime appears to have been disclosed. The apparent channel for CNBV authorized institutions to serve retail virtual asset clients is therefore operationally inert. The result is Mexico’s market paradox: virtual assets are lawful outside the regulated financial perimeter, yet effectively closed to institutions inside it. Exchanges serving Mexican users occupy a space that is not prohibited, but not purpose built either, a structural gap any Mexican strategy must address.

Anti-money Laundering Law

For years, Mexico’s Anti-money Laundering (AML) law supplied the clearest legal hook. The AML Law has long treated professional virtual asset exchange by non-financial platforms as a “Vulnerable Activity,” requiring customer due diligence and UIF reporting. The 2025 reform did not create that category; it tightened it.

Key AML law recent changes include lower reporting thresholds; explicit extraterritorial reach for offshore providers serving Mexican users; travel-rule-style duties to collect, retain and provide originator, recipient and beneficial owner data; ten year record retention; twenty-four hour suspicious operation alerts in relevant cases; a formal risk based approach, internal policy manual, annual training, automated monitoring and annual audit; and a tighter beneficial owner control test, reduced from 50% to 25%. The 2025 reform, now subject to implementing rules, materially raises the sector’s compliance burden.

Procedure, commerce and civil law.

Mexican crypto law discussions often stop at the Fintech Law, Banxico and AML. They should not. For activity outside the financial perimeter, the governing law often sits elsewhere, in procedure, commerce and civil law.

The National Code of Civil and Family Procedure (CNPCF), published in 2023, is the first federal statute to define “blockchain” (cadena de bloques) and “metaverse” and, more importantly, to address distributed ledger evidence. It recognizes electronic documents or data messages recorded on a public blockchain as admissible evidence with full probative value (prueba plena), absent reliable signs of tampering or unreliability. It turns blockchain’s auditability into a litigable legal fact.

The commercial implications are direct. Proof of ownership, smart contract execution and chain of custody are central to tokenization, and the CNPCF gives courts a basis to treat well-built on-chain evidence as conclusive. It is Mexico’s closest thing to an enabling statute for tokenization, though written for courts rather than capital markets.

Around that procedural anchor, other laws apply by business model. A Mexican digital asset structure is rarely governed by one statute alone: it is assembled from the Fintech Law if the perimeter is triggered, the AML regime, procedural rules for evidence, private civil and commercial law for the underlying rights, and data protection and consumer rules where relevant.

Tax: a pre-existing framework applied to a new asset class

Mexico has no dedicated tax regime for crypto-assets. There is no special chapter in the Income Tax Law, and no binding guidance from the tax administration (SAT) on point. Their treatment has instead developed by applying general principles to an economic reality those rules were never designed for, beginning with characterization. For tax purposes crypto-assets are generally regarded as intangible assets and, on disposal, analyzed under the rules for transfers of movable property. That single choice channels the entire analysis through the law of disposition of property, with one immediate consequence: the sale of a crypto-asset, and importantly the exchange of one crypto-asset for another, is a disposition of property under the Federal Tax Code, so that a crypto-to-crypto swap is a taxable event even where no peso or fiat ever changes hands, because the exchange is treated as two separate dispositions.

Resident individuals

For resident individuals disposing occasionally, gains generally fall under the disposition of property chapter, taxed at progressive rates up to 35%, with the distinctive Mexican feature of an inflation adjustment to acquisition cost. There is a respectable argument that the general exemption for occasional gains on movable property below roughly $120,000 pesos can reach crypto-assets, though they are not expressly named. Where activity is regular or organized, frequent trading, mining with dedicated infrastructure, or crypto services, it may be recharacterized as business income, still capped at 35% for individuals.

Resident legal entities

Corporate residents recognize gains within annual taxable income at the 30% rate, with no special regime separating crypto-assets from any other source of taxable profit.

Wealth, inheritance and gifts

Mexico does not levy income tax on wealth, so the mere holding of crypto-assets does not give rise to taxation. In succession matters, inheritances are exempt from income tax, and gifts between spouses and between ascendants and descendants are likewise exempt; the tax cost carries over, so that the heir or the donation beneficiary is taxed when the assets received are subsequently disposed of. There are no special rules: crypto-assets follow the general regime for the transfer of property.

Staking, airdrops and accounting

Under the prevailing reading, staking rewards and airdrops are treated as taxable income at fair market value on receipt, as a real accretion to wealth, whereas mere daily price fluctuation is not a taxable event, with gain recognized only on disposal. Mexico is also unusual in the region in having a dedicated accounting standard, NIF C-22 (Cryptocurrencies), effective since 2021, which recognizes cryptocurrencies as a distinct asset class with their own measurement and disclosure rules. Because accounting recognition and tax recognition do not always coincide, holders must run both analyses.

Value-added tax

Value-added tax, by contrast, remains genuinely unsettled. While the disposal of assets is, in principle, a taxable act under the VAT Law, that same law exempts the disposal of used movable property when it is not carried out by a business, as well as the disposal of domestic and foreign currency. Under a reasonable view, an individual who sells crypto-assets occasionally could fall outside VAT on this basis, although it is not clear-cut that crypto-assets qualify as “used” property; by contrast, an individual or a legal entity operating on a business basis would be subject to it.

Tax transparency: the CARF turn

Mexico has committed, alongside more than fifty jurisdictions, to the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), with first automatic exchanges of information slated to commence in 2027. The distinction from the older Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is technically important and strategically decisive: where the CRS largely reports year-end balances, CARF requires reporting of transactions throughout the year, purchases, sales, exchanges, transfers and payments, allowing tax authorities to reconstruct a taxpayer’s crypto activity with granular precision. The result is the asymmetry that characterizes much of Latin America: limited certainty on the substantive treatment of complex transactions, paired with rapidly increasing visibility into what taxpayers are actually doing. The practical conclusion is plain, the question is no longer whether crypto-assets are taxed but whether positions are correctly interpreted and adequately documented in an environment where the information will no longer be opaque.

Real-world asset tokenization

If there is a single theme animating the Mexican market today, it is the tokenization of real-world assets such as real estate, funds, commodities, receivables and, increasingly, art. The legal treatment is best understood not as a new regime but as a sorting exercise, and the sorting turns on the token’s economic substance rather than its label.

Security tokens follow the securities laws. Where a token represents equity, debt or another investment return that is in substance a security, it falls within the Securities Market Law. If it falls within the definition of a security (valor), its issuance and trading require licensed intermediaries, CNBV supervision and the standard disclosure architecture. Tokenizing a security does not escape securities regulation; it simply changes the wrapper around an instrument that remains fully regulated.

Asset-backed and utility tokens fall to private law. Where a token represents a non-financial real-world asset, such as fractional interests in real estate, a commodity or a piece of art, there is no dedicated tokenization statute in Mexico. These projects are structured under Mexican private law: the civil and commercial codes for the rights and obligations, tax law for the consequences, and the AML regime at the on-ramp. This is where the CNPCF’s evidentiary recognition quietly earns its keep, giving the on-chain record a defensible legal status that the off-chain wrapper can rely upon.

In the absence of a bespoke statute, market practice has converged on familiar tools used carefully. Projects typically separate off-chain legal title which are frequently held through a trust (fideicomiso) or a special purpose vehicle, from the on-chain token that represents the economic interest, bind the two through enforceable contractual documentation, and place the know your customer and AML controls at the gateway where users enter and exit. The craft lies in matching the token to the correct legal box and then building the wrapper that the box requires.

Tokenization changes the evidentiary and operational layer, but not the formal requirements for the transfer, perfection or enforceability of the underlying Mexican law right.

What to do with all of this

For businesses, investors and counsel with a Mexican nexus, the key is not whether crypto is “allowed,” but how each activity fits within Mexico’s legal framework. Four priorities follow.

1. Classify the token first. Its substance (security, payment instrument or asset-backed right) determines the law that applies.
2. Prepare the AML program. Design the risk-based controls, audit function, travel-rule data flows and new reform duties ahead of the expected rules.
3. Treat traceability as a tax asset. CARF will increase visibility from 2027, making records and documented positions on swaps, staking and airdrops essential.
4. Use the CNPCF strategically. Structure tokenization so the on-chain record can support full probative value through integrity controls, clear off-chain links and audit trails.

Mexico’s framework is deliberately cautious: it recognizes virtual assets, limits financial sector exposure, strengthens AML oversight, supports blockchain evidence and advances tax transparency.

Sources and further reading

Primary legislation and regulation (in force):

1. Ley para Regular las Instituciones de Tecnología Financiera (LRITF, “Fintech Law”), arts. 30–32 — Cámara de Diputados. https://www. diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LRITF.pdf
2. Ley Federal para la Prevención e Identificación de Operaciones con Recursos de Procedencia Ilícita (LFPIORPI) — Cámara de Diputados (reform published in the DOF, 16 July 2025). https:// www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LFPIORPI.pdf
3. Código Nacional de Procedimientos Civiles y Familiares (CNPCF), arts. 2, 348 and 350 — Cámara de Diputados (DOF, 7 June 2023). https://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/CNPCF.pdf
4. Circular 4/2019 (modified by Circular 37/2020), virtual-asset operations of credit and fintech institutions — Banco de México. https://www.banxico.org.mx/marco-normativo/normativa-emitida-por-el-banco-de-mexico/circular-4-2019/circular-4-2019.html
5. Joint communiqué of Banxico, SHCP and CNBV on the risks of virtual assets (June 2021) — Gobierno de México. https://www. gob.mx/cnbv/prensa/comunicado-conjunto-banco-de-mexico-shcp-y-cnbv-advierten-sobre-riesgos-de-utilizar-activos-virtuales?idiom=es

Analysis, tax transparency and comparative materials:

6. OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF): jurisdictions committed to first exchanges in 2027, including Mexico — OECD Global Forum. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/ networks/global-forum-tax-transparency/crypto-asset-reporting-framework-monitoring-implementation-update-2025.pdf
7. Procuraduría de la Defensa del Contribuyente (PRODECON) — treatment of cryptocurrency gains as property. https:// www.prodecon.gob.mx/Documentos/bannerPrincipal/2021/ CRIPTOMONEDAS_.pdf
8. Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA) — comparative benchmark — EUR-Lex. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ES/TXT/ PDF/?uri=CELEX:32023R1114
9. IMEF, Boletín Técnico 2025-03: Tokenization and the digital economy. https://imef.org.mx/descargas/2025/diciembre/IMEF-Boletin-Tecnico-03-2025.pdf
10. Library of Congress — Regulatory Approaches to Cryptoassets: Mexico. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687414/