El Salvador built what almost no country has: a dedicated law for issuing digital assets (the LEAD, January 2023) with a dedicated supervisor, the CNAD, that authorises issuances in weeks. The result is measurable: dozens of authorised issuances since 2024 — with 2025 the record year — and issuance costs between 2% and 4% of capital raised, according to local financial press.
The LEAD and the CNAD
The Digital Assets Issuance Law creates its own regime — separate from the traditional securities market — for issuing digital assets: tokenized debt, agricultural products, stablecoins. The Comisión Nacional de Activos Digitales reviews and authorises each issuance, enforces transparency and protects acquirers. The law has been reformed to refine the framework, and the regulator itself actively promotes the country as a jurisdiction to tokenize in.
What makes it different
Speed and cost. Against the months of a traditional prospectus, the LEAD has cut the process to weeks, at 2-4% issuance cost. Track record. Debt, leasing and investment issuances from repeat issuers — real history, not promises. The caveat: it is a bespoke regime of a small market; to reach European or institutional investors, issuers must assess recognition of the instrument abroad — exactly the prior analysis we run in any tokenization project.
Who it makes sense for
Issuers with a Central American base or business, projects seeking regulatory speed for debt or cash-flow instruments, and structures that later scale to other markets with the right vehicle. The full regional map is in asset tokenization in Latin America.
Framework as of mid-2026, public sources linked. An issuance under the LEAD? Talk to us.