Vietnam's Ministry of Finance: The first batch of official transactions will land as early as the third quarter

Vietnam is accelerating the promotion of a regulated cryptocurrency trading market pilot to alleviate the scrutiny pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on its anti-money laundering mechanisms. Vietnam has been on the FATF "grey list" since June 2023, and the long-ignored regulatory cryptocurrency industry is seen as one of the major risk points.

According to a five-year pilot program led by the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance, the exchange license requires a minimum paid-in registered capital of 100 trillion Vietnamese dong, approximately 380 million USD, with a foreign ownership limit of 49%, and trading can only be priced in Vietnamese dong. Currently, five applicants, including Techcombank, VPBank, LPBank affiliates, VIX Securities, and Sun Group, have passed the preliminary review, and the first official trading activities in the Vietnamese cryptocurrency market are expected to emerge as early as the third quarter. The Vietnamese Ministry of Finance is also drafting relevant rules to prohibit Vietnamese citizens from trading on overseas cryptocurrency platforms.