The county's Federal Regulator is Colombia's Financial Superintendence (8). Colombia’s government has released (9) draft rules for crypto companies in 2022.
The Financial Superintendence of Colombia approved (10) a regulation through Decree 1234 of 2020, with the objective that the entities supervised by this entity can adopt everything related to the controlled test space for financial innovation activities. Local Banks and fintechs (Bancolombia, Davivienda, Powwi, Banco de Bogota, Coltefinanciera, Coink, Movii) operated crypto activities in cooperation with the following crypto exchanges: Gemini, Binance, Bitso, Buda, Obsidiam, Banexcoin, Panda and Bitpoint. The experiment lasted three years from December 2021 to December 2023. Following its results, the regulator stated (11) in the middle of 2024, that this regulatory regime “constitute a valuable input for defining a possible regulatory initiative”.
In December 2021, the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF) issued (12) Resolution 314, which requires crypto companies, which “exchange, transfer, custody or administration of virtual assets or exchange between virtual assets and fiat currencies” to register by UIAF. As of April 1, 2022, Bitcoin transactions greater than US$150 must be notified to the UIAF. However, based on our research this sandbox regime was limited by time and now it's over. Also this factor probably stimulated local crypto exchanges to get payment institution license and use it for crypto to fiat exchange operations.
In 2022 Colombia’s parliament has reviewed regulation proposal (13) for crypto exchange similar to basic FATF approach, but based on our information this law wasn’t accepted. That’s why later in 2023 the parliament has debated a new bill proposal (14). Anyway, the lack of clear regulation of cryptocurrencies in Colombia as of October 2023 is confirmed by the speech (15) of the local Finance Minister Ricardo Bonilla, who spoke about the government's intention to issue a CBDC and create a transparent regulation for cryptocurrencies.
In May 2024, despite the lack of regulation, a major local bank, Bancolombia, launched (16) its crypto card through the bank-owned Wenia platform. So the lack of regulation does not prevent exchanges from operating in the country and exchanging crypto for fiat, at least if their partners have financial licenses. At the same time, the number of cryptocurrency users in the country is estimated to be high - about 6 million.