A regulated firm must be able to attribute activity to an identified person, and assets or accounts that make that impossible are barred at the licensed perimeter. This is a rule about attribution, not about whether amounts are public.
What Bangladesh actually says
Bangladesh is a useful reminder that a country does not need a crypto statute to prohibit crypto. The bar here runs through exchange control: because virtual currencies are not currency within the meaning of the 1947 foreign exchange law, dealing in them is not an approved transaction, and the central bank's 2022 circular states plainly that such transactions and any facilitation of them are not permitted. Breach is cognizable under the same 1947 Act. There is no licensing path and no state digital currency offering an alternative, so the practical effect is that residents transact on fully identified bank and mobile money rails. Confidentiality is not restricted here so much as the entire asset class is.
The instruments that matter
- FE Circular No. 24, 15 September 2022
- transactions in, from or to Bangladesh for obtaining virtual assets, and providing any kind of facilitation for such business, are not permitted
- The reasoning is definitional
- virtual currencies are not recognised as currency under section 2(b)(i) of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947, and are neither approved foreign exchange nor an approved transaction
- Criminally enforceable
- violations contravene section 5(1)(e) of the 1947 Act and are cognizable under section 23(1)
- No substitute channel
- no crypto-specific licensing route exists and we located no central bank digital currency pilot, so activity is pushed onto fully identified banking and mobile financial service rails
What this means for confidential transactions
Bubble is built for exactly this shape of obligation: amounts and balances live on chain as ciphertexts, computation happens without decryption, and the only disclosure path is an on-chain access list through which an authorized party - an auditor, a supervisor, a counterparty - can request scoped decryption. That is confidentiality from the public, not from the regulator.
Related entries
- ChinaAsia-Pacific · Crypto banned, and a state currency designed for anonymity
- IndiaAsia-Pacific · No crypto statute, regulated through AML and tax
- JapanAsia-Pacific · Untraceability barred by self-regulation, now moving into ordinance
- MalaysiaAsia-Pacific · A categorical ban written by definition, not by coin name
- South KoreaAsia-Pacific · Identity-maximalist, and exporting the model
- ThailandAsia-Pacific · Closed by whitelist, not by prohibition
Compliant by default.
See how selective disclosure satisfies a supervisor without publishing your book to the world.