Brazil’s top electoral court, the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), suspended presidential candidate Renan Santos’s digital campaign and froze R$3.3 million (roughly $640,000 USD) in public funds on August 31, weeks after he became the only contender to publicly back a national Bitcoin reserve.
Justice Dias Toffoli barred Santos and running mate Aroldo Medina from debates and ruled that 16 campaign social media profiles, declared 12 days after the campaign’s registration filing, cannot carry paid political ads.
The Bitcoin pledge behind the ruling
Santos, 42, made the Bitcoin reserve pledge on August 13 at Blockchain Rio 2026. He also promised to make Rio de Janeiro “crypto friendly” and to scrap the Tax on Financial Operations (IOF). He called Brazil’s crypto rules outdated and overly centralized.
The pitch puts him in company with Bukele’s Bitcoin-reserve model in El Salvador and Milei’s crypto embrace in Argentina. It also echoes Colombia’s recent election of a pro-crypto president, part of a broader rightward, crypto-friendly shift across Latin America.
Santos called the ruling against his campaign censorship and said his lawyers would seek an injunction from TSE president Nunes Marques.
The suspension landed the same morning The Economist profiled his candidacy as a possible Milei-style moment for Brazil.
What the ruling blocks
The order, signed Sunday and released Monday, halts new disbursements from the Special Campaign Financing Fund (FEFC), Brazil’s public election-financing pool, and bars the ticket from radio, television, and podcast debates.
Violations carry a R$50,000 (just under $ 10,000 USD) fine per ad or debate appearance. Toffoli also ordered platforms to pull the 16 profiles from recommendation algorithms or pay R$10,000 ($2,000 USD) per hour, per profile.
Officially declared digital campaign accounts are excluded from recommendation algorithms during the race, but his party’s (Missão’s) undeclared profiles remained eligible. One account with 2.4 million followers kept appearing in suggested-profile feeds alongside other candidates, Toffoli said.
Street campaigning continues, and the single website and X account Santos originally registered remain active. The candidacy itself was not thrown out.
The Mission Party, formed in 2025, is also fielding 57 congressional candidates alongside Santos.
Brazilians vote on October 4.
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