GLOSSARY · BLOCKCHAIN & WEB3
Fideicomiso (Latin American Trust)
What a fideicomiso is — the Latin American mercantile trust with a separate estate, trustee and beneficiaries — and why it is the standard vehicle for tokenizing assets in LATAM.
WHAT IS IT? · FOR DUMMIES
A fideicomiso is a trust arrangement common across Latin America: you hand assets (a property, money, a project) to a professional administrator — the fiduciario (trustee) — to manage them for someones benefit under written rules. The assets sit in a separate estate: they belong neither to the trustee nor to the person who contributed them, and that separation is the protection.
WHAT IS IT? · PRO
A fideicomiso involves three roles: the fideicomitente (settlor) contributes the assets, the fiduciario (trustee, usually an authorised entity) administers them under the contract, and the beneficiario (beneficiary) receives the returns or the assets. The legal key is the autonomous estate: trust assets are segregated from the personal estates of all parties, shielded from their creditors.
Spain has no general equivalent of the common-law trust or the Latin American fideicomiso — corporate SPVs and funds are used for analogous purposes. Across much of Latin America — Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina — the mercantile fideicomiso is central to financial and real estate structuring.
Which is its connection to this glossary: in LATAM the fideicomiso is the standard wrapper for tokenizing assets. The asset is contributed to the trust estate and the beneficiaries rights are represented by tokens, with the trustee as the regulated anchor of the structure — the same vehicle-plus-registry logic we apply in asset tokenization and that investors should understand before investing in tokenized real estate.
01 / Key points
- Three roles: settlor (contributes), trustee (administers), beneficiary (receives)
- Assets form an autonomous, segregated and protected estate
- Spain has no general equivalent; in LATAM the mercantile fideicomiso is central
- The standard vehicle for tokenizing assets in Latin America
02 / Advantages
- Asset segregation: shielded from the parties creditors
- Contract-driven administration: rules are set and auditable
- Natural fit with tokenization: beneficiary rights are fractionable into tokens
03 / Disadvantages
- Trustee and setup costs
- Not available as a general figure in Spain: alternative structures required
- Uneven quality across jurisdictions: regimes and supervision vary by country