The parliament of the Pacific island state Vanuatu adopted a law on suppliers of virtual assets services that regulates their activities and obliges to obtain work permit.

According to this law, the license should receive cryptocurrency exchanges, areas for the sale of non -substantiated tokens (NFT), caste -diode services that provide crypto activists storage services, and companies that organize the primary placement of tokens (ICO). They must also provide reporting to the regulatory authorities.

The license will be issued by the Vanuatu Commission on Financial Services (VFSC). The agency will ensure compliance with the standards of the development group of financial measures to combat money laundering (FATF) and the rules for combating the financing of terrorism. In case of suspicion, the regulator can investigate the activities of crypto companies, and in case of violations, to impose fines on them up to 250 million cotton wool (about $ 2 million). For violators, a imprisonment of up to 30 years may be provided for violators.

VFSC clarified that the law does not affect stablecoins, tokenized securities and digital currencies of central banks (CBDC), although they may have some similarities with virtual assets.

The regulator said that the law was created after a long -term assessment of risks associated with digital assets. Vanuatu is a small jurisdiction, but this is what attracts unscrupulous players who use the lack of cryptocurrency regulation or insufficiently worked out rules for crypto companies. The adopted law should improve the access of the local population to financial services and simplify the conduct of cross -border payments using cryptocurrencies, VFSC said.

The Republic of Vanuatu was the world’s first country taking bitcoins in exchange for citizenship. In 2022, the British crypto -investor bought a uninhabited island in the archipelago to settle several thousand owners of cryptocurrencies there and create an unregulated “cryptotopium”.