Fatal problems with the Virtual Assets Bill

This col­umn is a cri­tique of the re­cent­ly tabled Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Bill 2025, which would have the ef­fect of dras­ti­cal­ly cur­tail­ing the free­dom of T&T na­tion­als to in­vest in cryp­tocur­ren­cy and NFTs.

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy is a $4 tril­lion mar­ket that al­lows per­sons to take part in com­merce and in­vest­ment any­where in the world with­out the de­lays as­so­ci­at­ed with bank­ing and wire trans­fers us­ing the SWIFT sys­tem. Many peo­ple in T&T have made huge prof­its by in­vest­ing in Bit­coin, Solana and Car­dano.

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy rep­re­sents an area of pos­si­ble in­no­va­tion and growth that could rev­o­lu­tionise our econ­o­my. Plat­forms like Ethereum & Tezos have whole ecosys­tems of soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions built on top of them, al­low­ing smart con­tracts and oth­er fea­tures that could rev­o­lu­tionise the fu­ture of busi­ness.

Smart adop­tion of cryp­tocur­ren­cy pol­i­cy in T&T could help the forex cri­sis. Ho­tels and in­vestors could take pay­ments from for­eign­ers in cryp­tocur­ren­cy and trade these for US dol­lars as they may need.

While the Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill does al­low li­censed busi­ness­es to trade in vir­tu­al as­sets, the ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ance costs of reg­is­tra­tion may be bur­den­some to small busi­ness­es and ven­dors. This rep­re­sents a cost to en­try that could de­ter in­no­va­tion. The fam­i­ly-owned bed and break­fast ser­vice that is strug­gling to break even may have to gam­ble the time and mon­ey need­ed to reg­is­ter to be able to ac­cept pay­ments in vir­tu­al as­sets and choose not to take part.

In the last few days, I de­cid­ed to join sev­er­al cryp­to groups and have re­ceived phone calls from peo­ple who saw or heard about a TV dis­cus­sion I had on the mat­ter. Some peo­ple make a liv­ing by mak­ing prof­its on cryp­tocur­ren­cy ex­changes and sell­ing cryp­to to T&T cit­i­zens in ex­change for TT dol­lars.

One in­di­vid­ual I spoke to has fam­i­ly mem­bers who in­vest­ed in lo­cal artists who to­kenised their art on the blockchain.

The Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill is vague enough to out­law what­ev­er prof­its artists and art col­lec­tors could make and would de­ter in­vest­ments in T&T’s artis­tic and cul­tur­al sec­tor.

One young in­vestor who makes a liv­ing off of buy­ing and sell­ing vir­tu­al as­sets wrote a let­ter to the sit­ting Gov­ern­ment, which I shall quote here. He asked to re­main anony­mous:

“The right to in­vest is no dif­fer­ent from the right to speak. Take away the right to in­vest, and you are in­di­rect­ly si­lenc­ing peo­ple’s fi­nan­cial voice in this ever-evolv­ing world of cur­ren­cies and as­sets. If the peo­ple’s suc­cess for who­ev­er at­tains it is a threat to the state, then the state be­comes the great­est threat to the peo­ple.

Strate­gi­cal­ly im­pos­ing re­stric­tions on the every­day per­son’s right to trans­act with dig­i­tal as­sets sim­ply keeps the pop­u­la­tion sup­pressed and for­bid­den from op­por­tu­ni­ty on a glob­al lev­el.

As of re­cent­ly, the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca are both ac­cel­er­at­ing in their wide­spread adop­tion of dig­i­tal as­sets.

Dig­i­tal as­sets are not a get-rich scheme; they are a di­ver­si­ty of projects that, when stud­ied, in­vest­ed in and ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over time, can serve to en­hance a per­son’s fi­nan­cial life through pa­tience and the Solomon­ic prin­ci­ple of “Time and Chance.”

A UK-based at­tor­ney at law and PhD Can­di­date in Blockchain law, Bri­an Sanya Mon­doh, post­ed on LinkedIn that: “The Trinidad and To­ba­go Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Bill 2025 is a dis­ap­point­ing and ter­ri­bly re­stric­tive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work!”

In my opin­ion, in­no­va­tion can’t be done!!! The Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion and the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go should re­al­ly have done a bet­ter job with this.

Rather than im­pos­ing a blan­ket freeze, the au­thor­i­ties could have opt­ed for a phased or pi­lot ap­proach that bal­ances risk man­age­ment with en­cour­ag­ing re­spon­si­ble in­no­va­tion to help the coun­try de­vel­op a com­pet­i­tive dig­i­tal fi­nance sec­tor.

With se­ri­ous forex is­sues and all, my sweet T&T will keep los­ing busi­ness to “di oth­er se­ri­ous is­lands and dem!”

In sum­ma­ry, Mr Mon­doh great­ly dis­agrees with the Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill in its present form.

While writ­ing this col­umn, the news broke that Vicky Boodram was dis­charged of over 100 fraud charges af­ter nine years in court. This fail­ure to pros­e­cute Boodram shows how bro­ken the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is.

The Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill, in its present state, would be pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive to en­force and be­come a bur­den on the TTPS and DPP to pros­e­cute.

My sug­ges­tion would be to lim­it the ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty of the Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill to a min­i­mum of around $50,000 per an­num, an amount that can al­low small busi­ness­es and in­vestors to ex­per­i­ment with vir­tu­al as­sets but not so large as to fa­cil­i­tate mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing.

The bill should be fine-tuned to tar­get on­ly sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions that could be linked back to or­gan­ised crime. In its present form, the Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill has the po­ten­tial to set T&T’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment back by 15 years, and I urge the Par­lia­ment to sig­nif­i­cant­ly amend the pro­vi­sions of this bill be­fore it is passed as law.

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