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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.
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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is calling for legislative changes in the US to allow stablecoin holders to earn “onchain interest” on their holdings.
In a March 31 post on X, Armstrong argued that crypto companies should be treated similarly to banks and be “allowed to, and incentivized to, share interest with consumers.” He added that allowing onchain interest would be “consistent with a free market approach.”
Source: Brian Armstrong
There are currently two competing pieces of federal stablecoin legislation working their way through the legislative process in the US: the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy (STABLE) Act, and the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
In reference to the stablecoin legislation, Armstrong said the US had an opportunity to “level the playing field and ensure these laws pave a way for all regulated stablecoins to deliver interest directly to consumers, the same way a savings or checking account can.”
Armstrong: Onchain interest a boon for US economy
Armstrong argued that while stablecoins have already found product-market fit by “digitizing the dollar and other fiat currencies,” the addition of onchain interest would allow “the average person, and the US economy, to reap the full benefits.”
He said that if legislative changes allowed stablecoin issuers to pay interest to holders, US consumers could earn a yield of around 4% on their holdings, far outstripping the 2024 average interest yield on a consumer savings account, which Armstrong cited as 0.41%.
Armstrong also said onchain interest could benefit the broader US economy — by incentivizing the global use of US dollar stablecoins. This could see their use grow, “pulling dollars back to U.S. treasuries and extending dollar dominance in an increasingly digital global economy,” according to the Coinbase CEO.
He also argued that the potential for a higher yield than traditional savings accounts would result in “more yield in consumers’ hands means more spending, saving, investing — fueling economic growth in all local economies where stablecoins are held.”
“If we don’t unlock onchain interest, the U.S. misses out on billions more USD users and trillions in potential cash flows,” Armstrong added.
Currently, neither the STABLE Act nor the GENIUS Act gives the legal go-ahead for onchain interest-generating stablecoins. In fact, in its current form, the STABLE Act includes a short passage prohibiting “payment stablecoin” issuers from paying yield to holders:
Source: STABLE Act
Related: Stablecoins, tokenized assets gain as Trump tariffs loom
Similarly, the GENIUS Act, which recently passed the Senate Banking Committee by a vote of 18-6, has been amended to exclude interest-bearing instruments from its definition of a “payment stablecoin.”
Commenting on the current state of the STABLE Act, Representative Bryan Steil told Eleanor Terrett, host of the Crypto in America podcast, that two pieces of legislation are positioned to “mirror up” following a few more draft rounds in the House and Senate — due to the differences between them being textual rather than substantive.
“At the end of the day, I think there’s recognition that we want to work with our Senate colleagues to get this across the line,” Steil said.
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A new semi-permissionless privacy tool, Privacy Pools, has launched on Ethereum, allowing users to transact privately while proving their funds aren’t linked to illicit activities.
The privacy tool, launched by Ethereum builders 0xbow.io on March 31, earned support from the likes of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who not only backed the privacy project but made one of the first deposits on the platform.
0xbow.io said that it implements “Association Sets” to batch transactions into the anonymous Privacy Pools and that a screening test is conducted to ensure that those transactions aren’t linked to illicit actors, such as hackers, phishers and scammers.
gm Ethereum ☀️
It is our great honor to announce the mainnet launch of Privacy Pools!
ETH users can now achieve on-chain privacy, while still dissociating from illicit funds
It is now up to all of us to Make Privacy Normal Again 🫡
More info in this thread 👇 pic.twitter.com/3nJO0AxoD1
— 0xbow.io (@0xbowio) March 31, 2025
The Association Sets are “dynamic” — meaning that if a transaction is admitted but later found to be illicit, it can be removed from the set without disrupting any other deposits, 0xbow.io said.
If a deposit is disqualified, the user can click the “ragequit” function to return the funds to their original deposit address.
The innovation is part of 0xbow.io’s vision to “Make Privacy Normal Again” while also attempting to achieve regulatory compliance.
Privacy protocols have received considerable backlash from regulators in recent years due to their increasing use by illicit actors to launder funds.
One of those privacy tools, Tornado Cash, was sanctioned by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) between August 2022 and March 2025 after it was linked to around $7 billion laundered by the North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group.
Tornado Cash has since been removed from OFAC’s blacklist after a US appeals court said the sanctions were unlawful in January 2025.
0xbow.io noted that initial deposits are limited to 1 Ether (ETH) but that the limit would be raised once the privacy protocol is more battle-tested.
Privacy Pools inspired by Buterin and others
Over 21 ETH has already been transferred into Privacy Pools from 69 deposits, including at least one from Buterin, 0xbow.io noted.
Source: Vitalik Buterin
In addition to Buterin, 0xbow.io said it also received investment support from Number Group, BanklessVC, Public Works and several angel investors.
Related: Privacy isn’t a luxury in crypto, it’s a necessity — Midnight CEO
0xbow.io also praised Buterin, Chainalysis Chief Scientist Jacob Illum, and two academics at the University of Basel in Switzerland for crafting a September 2023 white paper outlining how Privacy Pools could be built.
0xbow.io strategic adviser Ameen Soleimani also contributed to the paper, which has seen over 12,000 downloads and has been cited in nine other papers.
The Privacy Pool code also passed a successful audit from Audit Wizard. a smart contract auditing firm co-founded by former Apple engineer Joe van Loon.
More than $41 billion worth of illicit transfers were made in 2024, which made up 0.14% of total onchain volume for the year, according to the Chainalysis 2025 Crypto Crime report published on Jan. 15.
While it marked around an 11% fall from 2023, Chainalysis said that figure could climb to around $51 billion as more criminal-tied addresses are found.
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