Govt proposes crypto ban until December 2027 – Trinidad Guardian

September 21, 2025

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Govt proposes crypto ban until December 2027byAnthony Wilson, Geisha Kowlessar-Alonzo 2025092106100020250920var gJSONi105_1={“items”:[{“caption”:”Engineering, technology consultant Kavir Ramdass”,”source”:””,”type”:”photo”,”url”:”/image-3.6606003.760970.20250921105557.ab294ee24f”},{“caption”:”Attorney, president of the Fintech Association of T&T and chief legal officer Alexander Gafoor”,”source”:””,”type”:”photo”,”url”:”/image-3.6606002.760970.20250921105557.7bd309f718″},{“caption”:”TTExchange founder Quantum Chaos Ltd and director Shiva Ramdeen”,”source”:””,”type”:”photo”,”url”:”/image-3.6606001.760970.20250921105557.920cd6e632″},{“caption”:””,”source”:””,”type”:”photo”,”url”:”/image-3.6093812.760970.20250921105557.ed609701f5″}]}
;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—sim­i­