An­tho­ny Wil­son, Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

The Gov­ern­ment’s Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Bill, 2025, pro­pos­es to ban the pur­chase, sale, ex­change or trans­fer of cryp­tocur­ren­cies (which in­clude Bit­coin and Ethereum) un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2027 and is al­so seek­ing to im­pose fines of up to $5 mil­lion for any­one “en­gag­ing in unau­tho­rised vir­tu­al as­set ac­tiv­i­ties.”

The leg­is­la­tion was tabled in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo on Sep­tem­ber 12 and was on the or­der pa­per for last Fri­day's sit­ting, but was not de­bat­ed. The Bill is sub­ject to amend­ment in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate.

The Bill, at clause 4 (1), states that sub­ject to sub­sec­tion 5 (b) "no per­son shall, as a busi­ness or in the course of a busi­ness, car­ry on vir­tu­al as­set ac­tiv­i­ties in or from with­in Trinidad ex­cept where au­tho­rised by the Com­mis­sion." The Com­mis­sion re­ferred to in the Bill is the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, the statu­to­ry body that reg­u­lates se­cu­ri­ties, such as stocks, bonds and oth­er in­vest­ments.

The sec­tion states that the vir­tu­al as­set ac­tiv­i­ties re­ferred to in clause 4 (2) com­prise:

* The ex­change be­tween vir­tu­al as­sets and fi­at cur­ren­cies;

* The ex­change be­tween one or more forms of vir­tu­al as­sets ;

* The trans­fer of vir­tu­al as­sets;

* The safe­keep­ing or ad­min­is­tra­tion of vir­tu­al as­sets or in­stru­ments en­abling con­trol over vir­tu­al as­sets; and

* The par­tic­i­pa­tion in or pro­vi­sion of fi­nan­cial ser­vices re­lat­ed to an of­fer of an is­suer or sale of a vir­tu­al as­set.

Clause 4 (3) of the Bill states that, notwith­stand­ing any­thing in the Bill or any oth­er writ­ten law, the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion “shall not, on or be­fore De­cem­ber 31, 2027, grant any au­tho­ri­sa­tion un­der this Act or the Se­cu­ri­ties Act to any per­son in re­spect of op­er­at­ing as a wal­let ser­vice provider for any ac­tiv­i­ty set out in clause 2.” A lo­cal cryp­tocur­ren­cy trad­er, who re­qest­ed anonymi­ty be­cause of fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, agreed that the orig­i­nal lan­guage in the Bill pro­pos­es to ban all trad­ing in cryp­to as­sets in, or from with­in, T&T un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2025.

In re­sponse to the pub­li­ca­tion of the Bill, the Fin­tech As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Fin­techTT) launched a Vir­tu­al As­sets Work­ing Group (VAWG) last week to ad­dress con­cerns about the its po­ten­tial im­pact.

The for­ma­tion of this group high­lights the in­dus­try’s de­sire to col­lab­o­rate on a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that both en­sures safe­ty and fos­ters in­no­va­tion.

It said while sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s in­tent to align with the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) stan­dards and pro­tect con­sumers, it cau­tions that the Bill, in its cur­rent form, risks sti­fling in­no­va­tion by treat­ing le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es and bad ac­tors alike.

At the heart of the VAWG’s cri­tique is Clause 4(3) of the pro­posed bill, which im­pos­es a blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion on the ac­tiv­i­ties of Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers (WASPs) un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2027.

This mora­to­ri­um, while seem­ing­ly in­tend­ed to pro­vide time for the State to pre­pare, is ar­gued to be a coun­ter­pro­duc­tive mea­sure that would ul­ti­mate­ly harm con­sumers and the econ­o­my.

VAWG is most con­cerned that a blan­ket ban on cryp­tocur­ren­cy would harm the na­tion’s econ­o­my and so­cial fab­ric.

It ex­plained that such a move would strain an al­ready stressed econ­o­my by elim­i­nat­ing a vi­tal fi­nan­cial life­line for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

The group al­so high­light­ed that many in­di­vid­u­als who earn US dol­lars abroad de­pend on cryp­tocur­ren­cies for ef­fi­cient re­mit­tances, es­pe­cial­ly with ex­ist­ing re­stric­tions on for­eign cur­ren­cy.

This pol­i­cy would al­so leave stu­dents and en­tre­pre­neurs with­out vi­able al­ter­na­tives for pay­ing bills and man­ag­ing op­er­a­tions, as they cur­rent­ly use cryp­tocur­ren­cies for these pur­pos­es.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian fur­ther en­gaged key stake­hold­ers from the VAWG coali­tion who shared sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive ef­fects of the bill in its cur­rent form.

Shi­va Ramdeen, TTEx­change (a cryp­to on-ramp ser­vice), founder and di­rec­tor of Quan­tum Chaos Ltd (soft­ware de­vel­op­ment ser­vice), stressed that while the eco­nom­ic and con­sumer im­pact of the bill is ev­i­dent, a crit­i­cal yet un­der­dis­cussed con­se­quence is the threat it pos­es to lo­cal tal­ent re­ten­tion.

“A less men­tioned but very im­por­tant point is that many of the stake­hold­ers in­volved in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fin­tech space em­ploy tal­ent­ed tech­ni­cal ex­perts (soft­ware en­gi­neers, mar­keters, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and sales) who oth­er­wise would be forced to seek em­ploy­ment out­side of the of T&T, fur­ther­ing the brain drain we al­ready face,” he ex­plained.

En­gi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tant Kavir Ram­dass echoed these con­cerns, stress­ing that tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion leads reg­u­la­tion.

He warned that with­out smart, adap­tive poli­cies that fos­ter growth, T&T risks los­ing tech-dri­ven jobs, busi­ness­es, and for­eign ven­ture cap­i­tal to more pro­gres­sive Cari­com coun­tries.

“With a pro­por­tion­ate frame­work—sim­i­lar to those adopt­ed by our re­gion­al part­ners—we could be at­tract­ing these op­por­tu­ni­ties and build­ing a fu­ture-ready, di­verse dig­i­tal econ­o­my with re­silient jobs that go far be­yond our tra­di­tion­al oil and gas sec­tors,” Ram­dass added.

At­tor­ney Alexan­der Gafoor, who is pres­i­dent of the Fin­tech As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and chief le­gal of­fi­cer Coin­Sh­er (cryp­to ex­change) was al­so very vo­cal.

“This Bill, if it pass­es as pro­posed, will sti­fle in­no­va­tion, in­crease strain on dwin­dling forex re­serves and toss fu­el on­to a thriv­ing US dol­lar black­mar­ket. It al­so has the po­ten­tial to end re­la­tion­ships with glob­al gi­ants like VISA and Mas­ter­card as they in­ex­tri­ca­bly in­te­grate blockchain in­to their op­er­a­tions. Fur­ther, this sig­nals to an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence that we in Trinidad and To­ba­go, are not in­no­va­tion for­ward,” he said.

In a fur­ther dis­sec­tion of the bill by VAWG looked at Clause 4(2): De­f­i­n­i­tion of Vir­tu­al As­set Ac­tiv­i­ties.

It not­ed that the bill’s de­f­i­n­i­tion of “vir­tu­al as­set” is draft­ed so broad­ly that it could in­ad­ver­tent­ly cap­ture ac­tiv­i­ties far be­yond what in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards re­quire.

Cru­cial­ly, the bill omits lim­it­ing lan­guage that would oth­er­wise ex­clude non-fi­nan­cial us­es of dig­i­tal as­sets—po­ten­tial­ly sweep­ing in NFT cre­ators, soft­ware de­vel­op­ers, loy­al­ty point sys­tems, and even in-game to­kens that are not de­signed as fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments.

VAWG em­pha­sised that un­der most leg­isla­tive frame­works, the term “car­ry­ing on busi­ness” is in­ter­pret­ed broad­ly, of­ten in­clud­ing any ac­tiv­i­ty con­duct­ed with con­ti­nu­ity, rep­e­ti­tion, or an ex­pec­ta­tion of gain, re­gard­less of scale.

“So an NFT (non-fun­gi­ble to­ken, a type of dig­i­tal as­set that us­es blockchain tech­nol­o­gy) cre­ator sell­ing art­work, or a de­vel­op­er charg­ing for ac­cess to a non-cus­to­di­al wal­let app, could still fall with­in ‘course of busi­ness,” the group said.

To il­lus­trate a more bal­anced ap­proach, the group ref­er­enced the Cay­man Is­lands’ VASP Act (2020), which de­fines “vir­tu­al as­set ser­vice” as ac­tiv­i­ties con­duct­ed “as a busi­ness, on be­half of an­oth­er per­son or per­sons,” while ex­plic­it­ly ex­clud­ing “the de­vel­op­ment or sale of a soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tion” and “per­son­al use of a vir­tu­al as­set.”

VAWG ar­gued that sim­i­lar clar­i­fi­ca­tions are es­sen­tial to avoid sti­fling in­no­va­tion and mis­clas­si­fy­ing le­git­i­mate dig­i­tal ac­tiv­i­ties.

VAWG is al­so con­cerned with what it de­scribed at dis­pro­por­tion­ate penal­ties in these claus­es.

These deal with the cre­ation of crim­i­nal sanc­tions of TT$5 mil­lion fines and five years’ im­pris­on­ment for in­di­vid­u­als, di­rec­tors, of­fi­cers, and com­pa­nies en­gag­ing in unau­tho­rised ac­tiv­i­ty.

Dai­ly fines of TT$500,000 ap­ply for con­tin­u­ing of­fences.

VAWG how­ev­er, is con­cerned that these ex­ceed penal­ties for many com­pa­ra­ble in­frac­tions in tra­di­tion­al fi­nance.

Sun­shine, a lo­cal fin­tech found­ed in 2022 by en­tre­pre­neur and artist Jar­ry­on Paul, has al­so voiced strong con­cerns about the pro­posed vir­tu­al as­sets bill, warn­ing that its pas­sage in its cur­rent form could deal a sig­nif­i­cant blow to both the in­dus­try and the na­tion.

The com­pa­ny cau­tioned the leg­is­la­tion would force the abrupt shut­down of com­pli­ant, home­grown op­er­a­tions like Sun­shine, ef­fec­tive­ly strip­ping T&T’s le­git­i­mate dig­i­tal as­set com­mu­ni­ty of ac­cess to safe, reg­u­lat­ed ser­vices.

Paul em­pha­sised that while the bill may aim to curb il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty, its broad scope would like­ly push bad ac­tors fur­ther un­der­ground, re­duc­ing trans­paren­cy and over­sight rather than en­hanc­ing.

Sun­shine stat­ed that its pro­pos­al is sim­ple: reg­u­late the in­dus­try—but do it in a way that pro­tects peo­ple, sup­ports in­no­va­tion and builds the fu­ture.

“We be­lieve Trinidad and To­ba­go should aim high­er. We have a Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence; in­no­va­tion is part of our Na­tion­al Vi­sion. Our reg­u­la­tion should re­flect that same for­ward-think­ing spir­it,” Paul said.