Due to the lack of a complete legal framework, regulations related to VA-VASP are scattered across 19 legal documents, leading to the widespread situation of crowdfunding activities, fraud, and marketing and promotion of virtual asset services.
On June 5, the Vietnam Blockchain Association (VBA) held the 5th workshop on the Legal Framework for Managing Virtual Assets (VA) and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP).
The workshop took place in the context that nearly 1 year is left until the deadline for promulgating the Virtual Asset Legal Framework (May 2025) according to the Government’s commitment to implement the National Plan on Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing to remove Vietnam from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list.
At the workshop, experts discussed legal regulations from the perspective of user protection, and learned about some VA-VASP management models that are considered progressive, such as the European Union’s Crypto Assets Act (MiCA) which will take effect from the end of 2024 and the Hong Kong (China) Crypto Asset Management Law.
In Vietnam, due to the lack of a complete legal framework, regulations related to VA-VASP are scattered across 19 legal documents, leading to the situation where crowdfunding activities, fraud, and marketing and promotion of virtual asset services are still widespread and unlicensed, including in the university sector and hidden under many knowledge dissemination activities.
According to current regulations, VASPs operating without permission in Vietnam are at risk of violating Decree 13/2023/ND-CP on personal data protection when illegally collecting personal data; not protecting personal data; improper use of personal data.
Asset swaps, especially financial and real estate transactions such as stablecoin trading, coin mining, selling application tokens in GameFi, or selling NFTs, are not regulated in tax laws, the Law on Anti-Money Laundering 2022 of Vietnam, leading to the risk that these VASPs violate tax or anti-money laundering regulations.
According to Mr. Do Ngoc Quynh, General Secretary of the Vietnam Bond Market, the total cash flow of virtual assets converted into USD into the Vietnamese market will reach 120 billion USD in 2023.
Experts believe that banning transactions or prohibiting VASPs from operating is not feasible. Instead, it is necessary to quickly issue a legal framework in accordance with anti-money laundering standards.
According to Mr. Phan Duc Trung, Permanent Vice President of the Vietnam Blockchain Association, paying taxes on digital assets should be done like paying taxes on lottery tickets because investing in virtual currency is like buying lottery tickets, the winning money is lucky money. Mr. Phan Duc Trung believes that building sets of ethical standards, community standards, project standards and applying RegTech technology (Regulatory Compliance Support Technology) for on-chain tracking can contribute to minimizing fraud and scams related to virtual assets.