Completely block overseas exchanges? Understand the new chess game of Vietnam’s encryption supervision in one article

金色财经_Hollowzep128 day ago

As the global encryption landscape enters a new round of regulatory restructuring, a key battle for encryption “national borders” in Southeast Asia has quietly begun.

On March 17, 2026, a Vietnam Ministry of Finance document disclosed by Reuters showed that the country is planning to ban citizens from using overseas cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and OKX, and is fully promoting the pilot launch of the first batch of locally licensed digital asset exchanges.

This move means that this active market, which ranks fourth in the world in terms of encryption adoption and has an annual transaction volume of more than 200 billion US dollars, is about to transform from a global free port into a tightly regulated encryption siege.

The logical turning point of supervision

Vietnam’s ambivalence towards crypto-assets stems from the sheer size of its market and the risk of losing control. Chainalysis data shows that in the 12 months to June 2025, Vietnam’s digital asset transaction volume exceeded US$200 billion, ranking fourth in the global adoption index, and crypto applications have been deeply integrated into remittances, savings and even gaming scenarios.

However, almost all of this massive $200 billion in transactions occurred on overseas platforms. Capital flows, data flows, and potential fees and taxes all flow overseas. Against the background of Vietnam's strict foreign exchange controls and the lack of domestic high-quality investment channels (confidence crisis in the stock market, high real estate volatility, long-term gold premium), cryptocurrency has become one of the de facto main channels for capital outflows.

The statement of Pan Duczhong, chairman of the Vietnam Blockchain Association, clarified the core appeal: "Establishing a local exchange will help keep transaction fees in the country and support the growth of the digital economy."

Therefore, the core logic of the new policy is not to suppress encryption, but to replace the wild trading market with compliant exchanges and bring the out-of-control capital torrent into a state-regulated and taxable system.

Behind the sky-high price of licenses

Simultaneously with the blockade of overseas channels, there is a competition for the issuance of local licenses with extremely high thresholds. Currently, five institutions have passed the first round of qualification review, namely:

Techcombank (Technology Commercial Bank)
VPBank (Vietnam Prosperity Bank)
LPBank (chain postal commercial bank)
VIX Securities (well-known brokerage)
Sun Group (Sun Group, large comprehensive consortium)

As you can see, this list is basically traditional financial institutions, and there is no pure Web3 startup company. This also corresponds to the fact that crypto transactions are clearly defined as financial infrastructure in Vietnam, rather than innovative Internet products.

Among them, the entry threshold for licenses is staggeringly high:

Minimum paid-in capital: VND10 trillion (approximately US$400 million).
Shareholder structure: At least two financial institutions (banks/brokers/insurance/technology) are required to jointly contribute capital, and the proportion of institutional funds must be no less than 65%.
Foreign capital limit: Foreign ownership shall not exceed 49%.

This is essentially a top-level design to de-retail, de-grassroot, and strengthen financialization, aiming to ensure that the market is dominated by national teams and local giants with strong capital and sound risk control.

The impact of the “siege” effect

This combination of "blocking overseas + license pilot" will produce complex market effects——

First of all, this policy will definitely benefit the local ecology and taxation: once users are successfully migrated to the local platform, Vietnam will be able to capture huge transaction fees and levy potential taxes (the personal transaction income tax rate may be 0.1%, and the corporate profit tax is 20%). Estimates suggest that a transaction tax of just 0.1% could generate about $800 million in annual tax revenue.

Secondly, Vietnamese users who are accustomed to the high liquidity, low fees and rich products of global exchange platforms such as Binance may face the challenges of insufficient initial liquidity, single products and degraded experience on local platforms. Some users may turn to more obscure over-the-counter transactions, or other DeFi protocols.

In addition, the in-depth participation of banks and securities firms will accelerate the integration of crypto assets with the traditional financial system, which may lead to the creation of compliant financial products such as crypto derivatives and pledged lending based on local platforms.

The success of this experiment depends on two key factors: first, whether the local licensed platform can quickly establish a competitiveness sufficient to retain users; second, whether supervision can block overseas channels while effectively cracking down on the resulting gray underground transactions that are more difficult to monitor.

Conclusion

Vietnam’s move is not an isolated incident. It reflects the common feature of global encryption regulation moving from observation and acquiescence to the stage of sovereignty struggle: countries are trying to keep the economic value of encryption activities (data, taxes, employment) within their own borders.

The difference is that Vietnam, as an emerging market with highly active retail investors but underdeveloped financial infrastructure, has chosen the most radical and direct "traffic interception" method.

This regulatory restructuring not only tests Vietnam’s execution capabilities, but also provides a sample for global emerging markets. Regardless of the outcome, Vietnam has sounded the alarm for the Southeast Asian crypto market: compliance is no longer a multiple-choice question, but an admission ticket.

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