Vanuatu passes long-awaited crypto laws that won’t be ‘light touch’
Vanuatu has passed laws to regulate digital assets and provide a licensing regime for crypto companies wanting to operate in the Pacific island nation, which a government regulatory consultant has called “very stringent.”
The local parliament passed the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act on March 26, giving crypto licensing authority to the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) along with powers to enforce the Financial Action Task Force’s Anti-Money Laundering, Counter-Terrorism Financing and Travel Rule standards with crypto firms.
The VFSC has sweeping investigation and enforcement powers under the laws, with penalties stipulating fines of up to 250 million vatu ($2 million) and up to 30 years in prison.
“God help any scammer that goes into Vanuatu because you’ll go to jail,” Loretta Joseph, who consulted with the regulator on the laws, told Cointelegraph. “The laws are very stringent.”
“The thing is, we don’t want another FTX debacle,” she added, referring to the once Bahamas-based crypto exchange that collapsed in 2022 due to massive fraud committed by its co-founders, Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, along with other executives.
“Vanuatu is a small jurisdiction. Small jurisdictions are preyed on by the players that are looking for no regulation or light touch regulation,” Joseph said. “This is certainly not that.”
“I’m so proud of them to be the first country in the Pacific to actually take a position and do this,” she added.
New Vanuatu law regulates slate of crypto companies
The law establishes a licensing and reporting framework for exchanges, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, crypto custody providers and initial coin offerings.
The law notably allows for banks to be licensed to provide crypto exchange and custody services. Source: Parliament of the Republic of Vanuatu
The VFSC said that the legislation doesn’t affect stablecoins, tokenized securities, and central bank digital currencies even though they “may in practice share some similarities with virtual assets.”
The legislation also allows for the VFSC’s commissioner to create a sandbox to allow approved companies to offer a variety of crypto services for a year, which can be renewed.
Related: Australia outlines crypto regulation plan, promises action on debanking
Joseph said Vanuatu “needed a standalone piece of legislation” that covered Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terror Financing requirements, as the country didn’t have existing laws suited to virtual assets.
The regulator said in a March 29 statement that it had developed the legislative framework after years of “assessing the risks associated with virtual assets,” and the laws would open “numerous opportunities for Vanuatu” and improve financial inclusion by allowing regulated services for crypto cross-border payments.
VFSC Commissioner Branan Karae had said in June that the bill was expected to pass that September, but Joseph said the legislation was “not something that was done lightly.” It had been in development since 2020 and was delayed due to changes in government, natural disasters and COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions.
Magazine: How crypto laws are changing across the world in 2025
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has acknowledged there were “too many leaks” in the run-up to last month’s budget.
The flow of budget content to news organisations was “very damaging”, Ms Reeves told MPs on the Treasury select committee on Wednesday.
“Leaks are unacceptable. The budget had too much speculation. There were too many leaks, and much of those leaks and speculation were inaccurate, very damaging”, she said.
Money blog: Nine-year-old set up Christmas tree business to pay for university
The cost of UK government borrowing briefly spiked after news reports that income taxes would not rise as first expected and Labour would not break its manifesto pledge.
An inquiry into the leaks from the Treasury to members of the media is to take place. But James Bowler, the Treasury’s top official, who was also giving evidence to MPs, would not say the results of it would be published.
Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier asked if the group of MPs could see the full inquiry.
“I’d have to engage with the people in the inquiry about the views on that”, replied Mr Bowler, permanent secretary to the Treasury.
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OBR leak ‘a mistake of such gravity’
The entire contents of the budget ended up being released 40 minutes early via independent forecasters, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
A report into this error found the OBR had uploaded documents containing their calculations of budget numbers to a link on the watchdog’s website it had mistakenly believed was inaccessible to the public.
Tax rises ruled out
The chancellor ruled out future revenue-raising measures, including applying capital gains tax to primary residences and changing the state pension triple.
Committee member and former chair Dame Harriet Baldwin had noted that the chancellor’s previous statement to the MPs when she said she would not overhaul council tax and look at road pricing, turned out to be inaccurate.
During the budget, an electric vehicle charge per mile was introduced, as was an additional council tax for those with properties worth £2m or more.
Strategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury company, submitted feedback to index company MSCI on Wednesday about the proposed policy change that would exclude digital asset treasury companies holding 50% or more in crypto on their balance sheets from stock market index inclusion.
Digital asset treasury companies are operating companies that can actively adjust their businesses, according to the letter, which cited Strategy’s Bitcoin-backed credit instruments as an example.
The proposed policy change would bias the MSCI against crypto as an asset class, instead of the index company acting as a neutral arbiter, the letter said.
The MSCI does not exclude other types of businesses that invest in a single asset class, including real estate investment trusts (REITs), oil companies and media portfolios, according to Strategy. The letter said:
“Many financial institutions primarily hold certain types of assets and then package and sell derivatives backed by those assets, like residential mortgage-backed securities.”
The letter also said implementing the change “undermines” US President Donald Trump’s goal of making the United States the global leader in crypto. However, critics argue that including crypto treasury companies in global indexes poses several risks.
Related: Strive calls on MSCI to rethink its ‘unworkable’ Bitcoin blacklist
Crypto treasury companies can create systemic risks and spillover effects
Crypto treasury companies exhibit characteristics of investment funds, rather than operating companies that produce goods and services, according to MSCI.
MSCI noted that companies capitalized on cryptocurrencies lack clear and uniform valuation methods, making proper accounting a challenging task and potentially skewing index values.
Strategy held 660,624 BTC on its balance sheet at the time of this writing. The stock has lost over 50% of its value over the last year, according to Yahoo Finance.
Bitcoin (BTC) is also 15% below its value at the beginning of 2025, when it was trading over $109,000, meaning that the underlying asset has outperformed the equity wrapper.
The high volatility of cryptocurrencies may heighten the volatility of the indexes tracking these companies or create correlation risks, where the index performance would mirror crypto market performance, according to a paper from the Federal Reserve.
The “common use” of leverage by crypto traders amplifies volatility and lends to crypto’s fragility as an asset class, the Federal Reserve wrote.
MSCI’s proposed policy change, set to take effect in January, could also prompt treasury companies to divest their crypto holdings to meet the new eligibility criteria for index inclusion, creating additional selling pressure for digital asset markets.
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The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a union championing educators in the United States, has voiced its opposition to crypto market structure legislation moving through the Senate, claiming it “threatens the stability of their retirement security.”
In a Monday letter to Republican and Democratic leaders on the US Senate Banking Committee provided by CNBC, the AFT said it opposed passage of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, the bill that senators said “built on” the House of Representatives’ proposed solution to market structure, the CLARITY Act. According to the teachers’ union, the bill presents “profound risks” to economic stability and retirement plans.
“This bill fails to provide a regulatory structure for crypto assets and stablecoin that is equivalent to that for other pension holdings,” said the letter. “Most pensions do not carry crypto assets because of their risk. This legislation pretends that crypto assets are stable and mainstream, and they are not.”
The CLARITY Act, a July draft of the market structure bill proposed by the Senate Banking Committee, and a November draft from the Senate Agriculture Committee did not explicitly mention allowing digital assets to be used in pensions or retirement funds. The AFT claimed that if the bill were to be passed, “Pensions and 401(k) plans will end up having unsafe assets even if they were invested in traditional securities.”
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations raised similar concerns over the market structure bill posing risks to “retirement funds and to the overall financial stability of the US economy” in an October letter to the banking committee. The group claimed that the legislation would “increase workers’ exposure by greenlighting retirement plans like 401(k)s and pensions to hold this risky asset.”
Related: Japan plans major shift as crypto moves from payments to securities law
The AFT represents 1.8 million members working in education, healthcare and public services. According to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, aggregate public pension assets, including teachers, totaled more than $6.5 trillion as of the second quarter of 2025, while the Investment Company Institute reported in September that total retirement assets in the US were about $45.8 trillion.
Trump is addressing crypto in retirement funds through executive orders
Separate from the Senate’s efforts to pass market structure, US President Donald Trump has attempted to change policy to allow cryptocurrencies to be included in 401(k) retirement plans. In August, Trump signed an executive order directing the Labor Department to reevaluate restrictions around alternative assets in defined-contribution plans, including digital assets.
Asset management companies have already been making moves signaling openness to adding digital assets to individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) and 401(k)s.
In October, Morgan Stanley reportedly began allowing its advisers to suggest crypto funds as part of its clients’ retirement portfolios. State-managed retirement funds, such as those in Michigan and Wisconsin, also have exposure to crypto through digital asset-linked exchange-traded funds.
It’s unclear when the Senate will vote on a market structure bill in the full chamber. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the bill’s most outspoken proponents, said on Tuesday that she anticipated the banking committee releasing an updated draft this week, with a possible markup hearing before Congress broke for the holidays.
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