In early March 2025, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh assigned the Ministry of Finance to preside over and coordinate with the State Bank of Vietnam according to its assigned functions and tasks, propose and submit to the Government in March on a legal framework for management, promoting the development of digital assets and digital currencies in a healthy and effective manner.
This is the first time that a specific directive on the legal corridor for digital assets has been issued with a clear deadline, showing the Government's determination to control the market while still facilitating innovation.
The most concerned question at present is what will be the legal framework for managing and promoting the development of digital currencies?
The answer can be related to countries and territories that have a strict and flexible legal framework for digital assets such as Singapore, the UK, or the UAE.
These are specialized legal documents such as: laws, guiding decrees and digital regulations to protect consumers, prevent money laundering and financial fraud.
In particular, the most important thing is to identify and classify digital assets.
In the immediate future, it is necessary to clearly define the concept of "digital assets", thereby classifying digital currencies according to each functional group and separate characteristics to shape the scope of application of legal regulations, while avoiding loopholes in the implementation process.
A noteworthy issue is that after the Prime Minister's direction, many opinions said that building a legal framework for digital assets in Vietnam needs to be tested in practice before being widely applied.
These are very noteworthy opinions, because digital money and digital assets are not unfamiliar to the majority of Vietnamese people but are too new to managers.
Testing should be a necessary step because it helps management agencies evaluate the effectiveness and enforcement of regulations on a limited scale.
By doing so, it would allow blockchain startups, banks and financial institutions to test their products without undergoing a legal burden of about 12-24 months under close supervision.
Vietnam may consider granting pilot licenses to NFT or stock exchange platforms under the supervision of regulators.
hands-on experience not only helps to minimize negative impacts on investors and the market but also creates opportunities to collect opinions from businesses, investors and the technology community.
Through pilot projects, management agencies can also accumulate experience to perfect the financial risk monitoring and control system, thereby ensuring that when deployed widely, the legal framework will be operated effectively and safely.
If implemented methodically, carefully, reasonably, the new legal framework will certainly be a solid foundation for Vietnam to quickly catch up with global trends and create a safe and transparent investment environment for the digital asset industry in the current digital age.
