Vietnam's Crypto Revolution: From Gray Zone to Clear Legal Status—What Changed on June 14, 2025

The Watershed Moment: When Ambiguity Met Clarity

For years, Vietnam’s cryptocurrency market existed in legal limbo. Investors operated under contradictory signals: the Ministry of Finance suggested trading was acceptable, while the State Bank simultaneously banned crypto as a payment method. This contradiction created a tax gray area where billions flowed through exchanges with virtually no regulatory oversight—until June 14, 2025, when Vietnam’s National Assembly fundamentally reset the game.

The passage of the “Digital Technology Industry Law” marked the first time Vietnam explicitly recognized cryptocurrencies within its civil law framework. By January 1, 2026, when the law takes effect, crypto assets will transition from a regulatory blind spot to a clearly defined asset class. This isn’t just legal semantics; it’s the foundation upon which Vietnam’s entire tax, compliance, and investment architecture will be rebuilt.

Understanding the New Legal Classification

The breakthrough lies in precision. The law distinguishes between two categories: cryptoassets (secured by encryption and blockchain technology) and virtual assets (trading and investment instruments), while explicitly excluding securities, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies from this framework.

This classification solves a critical problem rooted in Vietnam’s 2015 Civil Code, which never contemplated digital property. Article 105.1 defined assets as physical items, currency, or monetary instruments—categories that cryptocurrencies obviously didn’t fit. The new law rewrites this omission, granting crypto the legal status of property, which simultaneously enables taxation, liability frameworks, and investor protections.

The timing wasn’t accidental. Vietnam hosts one of the world’s highest cryptocurrency adoption rates—roughly one in five citizens holds digital assets, with annual inflows exceeding $100 billion. Yet this enormous market was generating zero tax revenue and increasingly attracting international scrutiny.

Why Vietnam Shifted from Prohibition to Regulation

The transformation from the 2017 State Bank prohibition order to 2025 legalization reflects changed calculations in Hanoi’s policy machine. Three pressures converged:

International Compliance Pressure: Vietnam’s placement on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list for deficiencies in crypto-related anti-money laundering practices forced action. Remaining on that list damages Vietnam’s international financial reputation and makes attracting foreign investment harder. Legalizing and regulating crypto—implementing Know Your Customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) measures—directly addresses FATF concerns.

Economic Recognition: By 2024, Vietnam’s new leadership recognized that suppression was futile while opportunity was real. Unlike early 2010s crypto experiments, blockchain and digital assets are now considered core strategic technologies, alongside AI and semiconductors, in Vietnam’s national digital transformation agenda.

Revenue Imperative: A market moving $100+ billion annually generates zero tax revenue under the current gray status. Once legal classification arrives, taxation becomes both viable and necessary.

The Regulatory Architecture: Who Controls What

Vietnam’s crypto regulatory system now follows a division-of-labor model across multiple agencies:

• State Bank of Vietnam (SBV): Supervises payment systems and anti-money laundering compliance for crypto transactions
• Ministry of Finance (MoF): Develops taxation frameworks and licensing for crypto service providers
• Ministry of Public Security: Enforces anti-fraud and cybersecurity requirements
• Vietnam Blockchain Association (VBA): Acts as the industry’s representative body

This distributed approach mirrors Southeast Asia’s regulatory models, particularly Thailand and Singapore’s frameworks. However, Vietnam’s execution remains the critical variable.

The Tax Framework: From Gray Area to Tiered Taxation

Currently, crypto taxation in Vietnam exists nowhere on the books. This creates a de facto tax haven status—a competitive advantage that simultaneously represents foregone government revenue.

The Ministry of Finance is finalizing a draft resolution establishing a pilot taxation program with multiple potential approaches:

Transaction-Level Tax: A 0.1% transaction fee modeled on Vietnam’s stock trading tax, generating consistent revenue without dramatically dampening trading volume

Capital Gains Model: Classifying crypto as investment assets and taxing trading profits similarly to stock or real estate transactions

Corporate Income Tax: Applying the standard 20% corporate income tax to businesses engaged in crypto trading

Alternative Proposals under discussion include:

• 5–10% personal income tax on NFT profits
• 1–5% withdrawal fees on foreign investor profits
• 10% corporate income tax incentive for pilot exchanges (first five years)
• VAT exemption for digital asset transactions to enhance liquidity

The tax pilot program will operate at limited scale, closely monitored to determine how income from crypto-assets should be classified and taxed—the essential data for designing Vietnam’s permanent tax regime.

The Sandbox Strategy: Learning Through Controlled Experimentation

Rather than imposing comprehensive regulations immediately, Vietnam is deploying regulatory sandboxes—controlled testing environments for new financial technologies. Da Nang’s approved pilot, which includes testing stablecoin (USDT) usage for international tourism payments, exemplifies this approach.

These sandboxes serve dual purposes: accumulating practical experience about what works and what fails, while providing evidence for designing scalable national regulations. This methodology also signals to international investors that Vietnam understands innovation requires managed risk, not blanket prohibition.

Vietnam’s Digital Som and the CBDC Dimension

Running parallel to crypto regulation is Vietnam’s central bank digital currency exploration. The State Bank has been instructed to research a digital Som (Vietnam’s fiat currency in digital form), potentially complementing rather than competing with crypto assets. A sovereign digital currency adds another layer to Vietnam’s emerging digital economy infrastructure.

Comparative Context: How Vietnam Stacks Against Regional Peers

Vietnam’s approach positions it differently from neighboring markets:

• Thailand: More advanced regulatory framework but slower tax implementation; focusing on retail investor protection
• Singapore: Most developed framework with emphasis on institutional participation; stricter compliance requirements
• Malaysia: Explicit halal-compliant crypto frameworks; smaller but rapidly growing ecosystem
• Philippines: Lighter regulatory touch; higher informal sector exposure

Vietnam’s model blends Thailand’s structured approach with the Philippines’ market growth orientation, betting that clarity without excessive burden will attract both legitimate operators and investment capital.

The Immediate Practical Implications (Post-January 1, 2026)

Once the Digital Technology Industry Law takes effect, expect:

1. Mandatory Compliance Requirements: All crypto exchanges and service providers must implement KYC/AML/CTF procedures to international standards, likely including transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reporting

2. Licensing Regime: Crypto businesses will require government approval, filtering out scams and illicit operators while protecting legitimate platforms

3. Tax Reporting Obligations: Exchange platforms will become tax reporting entities, similar to brokers, automatically filing transaction data with revenue authorities

4. Investor Protection Mechanisms: Requirements for compensation funds (protecting against cyberattacks), segregated accounts, and transparency standards

5. Accelerated FATF Grey List Exit: Demonstrating functional AML/CTF frameworks should expedite Vietnam’s removal from the FATF enhanced review list

The Longer-Term Trajectory: Vietnam as Southeast Asia’s Compliant Innovation Hub

Vietnam’s government has signaled its commitment to “inclusiveness with prudence”—embracing innovation while managing systemic risks. Future developments likely include:

Regulatory Refinement: Supporting guidelines and compliance standards will emerge over 2026-2027, refined based on sandbox pilot experience

Tax System Maturation: The current pilot taxation framework will transform into permanent tax policy, potentially incorporating differentiated rates for various transaction types

Financial System Integration: Exploration of crypto banks, national crypto exchanges, and stablecoin infrastructure to modernize Vietnam’s financial ecosystem

Talent and Capital Attraction: Clear legal status and reasonable taxation should draw legitimate crypto businesses from less-regulated jurisdictions, creating jobs and tax revenue

The Broader Significance: A Model for Emerging Markets

Vietnam’s journey from prohibition to regulation offers lessons for other emerging economies facing similar crypto-related policy dilemmas. Rather than viewing crypto as a threat to suppress or an opportunity to exploit, Vietnam ultimately chose the harder path: building governance capacity to manage both risks and potential.

With a substantial crypto user base (approximately 20 million people), clear digital economy development strategy, and now transparent legal frameworks, Vietnam is positioning itself as a market that attracts compliant innovation rather than regulatory arbitrage.

The crypto sector’s next five years will likely determine whether Vietnam can execute on this ambition—whether the regulatory sandboxes generate usable data, whether tax policy remains competitive without becoming predatory, and whether international confidence in Vietnam’s AML/CTF commitment accelerates its FATF delisting.

What’s certain: the ambiguity that defined Vietnam’s crypto market until June 2025 has been replaced by predictable rules. Whether those rules unleash growth or merely formalize existing activity remains the open question—and the true test of policy competence.