Apple on the Blockchain and Portuguese Tax Rules for Tokenisation
When Portugal introduced a specific personal income tax regime for cryptoassets, the debate focused almost entirely on BTC, ETH and the taxation of gains after a 365-day holding period.
Tokenisation now makes the boundary of that tax regime as important as the 1-year holding exemption itself.
Crypto is no longer necessarily a new asset class. In many cases, blockchain is simply the infrastructure through which an existing asset is issued, transferred or held.
The Portuguese Personal Income Tax (PIT) Code defines a cryptoasset broadly as a digital representation of value or rights that can be transferred or stored electronically using distributed ledger technology or similar technology. Unique and non-fungible cryptoassets, such as NFTs, are expressly excluded from that definition.
Taken in isolation, that wording is capable of covering much more than Bitcoin. It could potentially encompass digital representations of shares, bonds, investment funds and other financial rights. But the capital gains provision contains an important qualification. Article 10 of the PIT Code refers to the disposal of cryptoassets “que não constituam valores mobiliários”, i.e., cryptoassets that do not constitute securities.
Those five words are the starting point for Portugal's treatment of tokenisation.
Coinbase's recently launched tokenisation platform provides a useful example (and there are many other tokenisation platforms).
We will use the example of the recently issued Apple CB Certificates by Coinbaise, together with certificates over three other equities (Google, Meta and Nvidia), which are designed to provide investors with exposure to equity shares entirely through blockchain infrastructure.
The prospectus describes them as Certificates representing certain Financial Instruments and expressly calls them Securities. Each certificate represents a pro rata beneficial interest in deposited property whose principal component is Apple common stock.
The legal structure is not identical to direct ownership of an Apple share.
The certificates represent a pro rata beneficial interest in deposited property, including the underlying Apple shares and associated rights or proceeds. The prospectus also makes clear that the instruments are not shares in Coinbase Onchain SPV (issuer) itself, a separate legal entity based in the United Arab Emirates.
The prospectus therefore supplies strong evidence that the certificates should constitute valores mobiliários for Portuguese purposes. That conclusion excludes them from the special regime for cryptoassets, but it does not complete the entire PIT classification. The actual classification requires further questions.
What happes to the investor that instead of the traditional route of custudy banking set-up of his Apple shares decides to enters the wave of tokenization and buys on-chain Apple CB Certificates?
Indeed, the investor might hold Bitcoin in a digital wallet and, separately, hold an Apple CB Certificate in exactly the same technological environment (cold wallet or CEX). Both assets may be transferred solely on-chain. Both may be recorded using distributed ledger technology. Both are cryptoassets but the tax result should not necessarily be the same.
If the Apple CB Certificate then constitutes a valor mobiliário, Article 10(1)(k) (cryptoassets) does not apply because that provision is limited to cryptoassets that do not constitute securities. The 365-day cryptoasset exclusion and the crypto-to-crypto deferral mechanim for swaps are therefore unavailable.
The next step is then to identify the actual provision/classification that does apply.
Article 10(1)(b) for securities (such as equity shares) could be a possible classification if the intrument falls within the securities transactions covered by that provision.
Article 10(1)(g) may instead be the more specific rule if the instrument is specifically designed as a certificate giving its holder the right to receive the value of an underlying asset.
This somewhat (innocent) distinction may also have practical consequences. A direct holding of qualifying equity (such as parte social) may benefit from the monetary correction of its acquisition value where it has been held for more than 24 months. That adjustment is not available to certificates or other financial instruments merely tracking the shares. Both security or certificate classifications ordinarily produce Category G treatment at a 28% autonomous rate and neither benefits from the cryptoasset 365-day exclusion. But progressive rates may also apply for securities (not certificates) held for less than 365 days when taxpayer’s taxable income reaches the threshold for the highest progressive-rate bracket. Those progressive tax rates do not generaly extend to certificates, warrants or other derivative financial instruments tracking shares.
Ultimatly, a share does not cease to be a share because ownership is recorded electronically rather than on paper. In the same way, a security should not cease to be a security simply because it can be held in a self-custodial wallet or transferred solely within the blockchain. We need the tax regime to undertand this,
The Coinbase prospectus illustrates this evolution. The certificates are represented in token form on a distributed ledger, while their legal and economic architecture remains tied to traditional securities. The underlying Apple shares trade on Nasdaq, but the certificates themselves are expressly not admitted to trading on any stock exchange or other centralised trading venue. That difference matters also for long-term holdings. If Article 10(1)(b) would apply (in case the investor has directly the Apple shares), the holding-period tax reductions are potentially available since Apple shares are admitted to trading. Conversly, the Apple CB Certificate receives no tax reductions on that classification as the certificate itself is not admitted to trading.
Today tokenisation often involves an intermediary structure: an SPV holds conventional securities and issues tokens representing rights over them. Tomorrow, issuers may increasingly issue securities natively on-chain. We are seeying the beginning of the widespread tokenisation movement.
With this we also predict that the line between a “tokenised share” and a “share” may eventually become increasingly difficult and perhaps unnecessary to draw.
Portuguese legislation seems reasonably well prepared for tokenisation. The words “que não constituam valores mobiliários” prevent the cryptoasset regime from absorbing traditional financial instruments merely because they migrate on-chain. Those instruments remain subject to the existing rules for securities, certificates, derivatives, warrants and any other legal rights.
The principal challenge remains one of classification and the potential tax differences between each crypto investment option.
Lets start with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) that present comparatively little difficulty under the Portuguese definition. As supporting comparative context, the US SEC interpretation joined by the CFTC in March 2026 identifies both as digital commodities rather than digital securities. That US treatment is not determinative but it is consistent with treating BTC and ETH as non-security cryptoassets for personal income tax purposes.
The more difficult questions concern the many other tokens now available on blockchain networks, including even the stablecoins and real-world assets (RWAs).
The Apple CB Certificate is clearly more than a new Coinbase product. It tests whether existing tax legislation can accommodate the convergence of traditional finance and blockchain, while also showing that exclusion from the tax tratment as cryptoassets is only the beginning of the analysis.
On the other hand, stablecoins raise a different question. USDC, USDT and similar crypto may fall within cruptoasset definition, to the extent we agree that as we stand they are not security cryptoasdsets. MiCA generally classifies a token referencing a single official currency as an e-money token; that regulatory classification may inform, but again is not determinative. Economically, an investor exchanging BTC for USDC has exited Bitcoin volatility and moved into an instrument designed to track fiat currency. The widespread use of stablecoins may eventually require a closer examination of whether all non-security cryptoassets should receive identical tax treatment.
And then there are RWAs. Tokenisation is slowly moving beyond listed shares into bonds, funds, private credit, real estate interests, commodities and other conventional assets that can meaningfully be represented and traded on-chain. Some RWAs may clearly qualify as securities; others may represent contractual, property or merely economic rights. The Portuguese “valor mobiliário” exclusion will therefore solve many cases, but not necessarily all of them. As RWAs become more complex, identifying what the token actually represents may become another frontier of tax classification.
Tokenisation at large also raises several more technical questions:
On-chain swaps and the 365-day holding period. What happens to crypto-to-crypto tax neutrality when a security token appears in the middle of a crypto transaction? When does the 365-day clock stop, restart or continue as assets move between cryptoassets and securities?
Portfolio segregation and reporting. A wallet may present BTC, ETH, stablecoins and tokenised securities on exactly the same screen. How will taxpayers reliably identify and extract security tokens from their transaction history and apply the appropriate securities reporting rules?
DeFi and counterparty identification. What happens when a tokenised security is lent, provided to a liquidity pool, wrapped, pledged as collateral or exchanged for a liquidity-provider token? In a burn-and-mint or bridging process, has the taxpayer disposed of one security and acquired another, or merely changed its technological representation? Portuguese tax law created an additional unresolved problem for automated market makers, liquidity pools and smart-contract transactions: identifying the relevant counterparty and its tax jurisdiction or regime.
Income and corporate actions. Dividends, distributions, stock splits, rights issues and other corporate actions do not lose their nature merely because they are processed on-chain. But how should they be identified, valued and reported when executed automatically through a smart contract?
Gains, losses and costs. Taxable losses enter the balance for normal financial instruments and a negative balance may be carried forward for five years. By contrast, gains and losses on qualifying cryptoassets held for at least 365 days are both excluded. Losses may be disregarded where the counterparty is subject to a preferential tax regime. On the cost side, gas fees, protocol fees and slippage may still need to be allocated to the relevant acquisition or disposal.
Preferential-tax jurisdictions. The rules of cryptoassets or traditional securities also require particular attention when the issuer is established in Portugal's list of preferential-tax jurisdictions. Certain income or gains connected with issuers, entities or fiduciary structures domiciled in listed jurisdictions may be subject to a 35% autonomous rate. As regards losses, the issuer and the counterparty should also not be treated as interchangeable concepts.
These are already some practical questions for taxpayers, advisers and reporting platforms. The accompanying table summarises the principal classifications and their consequences.
Apple may be now on the blockchain. For Portuguese tax law, the decisive question is not where the asset sits, but what the investor actually owns.
Tiago Cassiano Neves & Guilherme Sottomayor
© Kore Partners, 2026
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