Soda Labs

British Virgin Islands

Structural confidentiality kept, transactional confidentiality not

JurisdictionAmericasConfidential with disclosure

Confidentiality is workable so long as the regulated firm can identify the parties and disclose on demand. Encrypted amounts are not the thing being restricted.

What British Virgin Islands actually says

The British Virgin Islands is a useful illustration that confidentiality is not one thing. At the level of corporate structure it deliberately preserves it: beneficial ownership information is filed with the regulator but not publicly disclosed, which is a policy choice other jurisdictions have abandoned under pressure. At the level of transactions it does the opposite, applying a travel rule from a thousand dollars and extending automatic exchange of information to crypto businesses. We located no position either way on anonymity-enhancing assets. So the entity behind a structure can stay out of public view while its transfers are reported, which is close to the inverse of how a public blockchain behaves.

The instruments that matter

Virtual Assets Service Providers Act, 2022, in force 1 February 2023
with the anti-money-laundering regulations of 2020 as amended in 2024 and the associated code of practice
Travel rule from USD 1,000
providers must transmit sender and recipient data, retain transfer records and apply enhanced due diligence for high-risk jurisdictions
Beneficial ownership filed but not public
ownership data goes to the regulator without public disclosure, which is a deliberate entity-level confidentiality choice paired with regulator-level transparency
Automatic exchange of information extended to crypto from 2025
a direct counterweight to that structural confidentiality

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.

Compliant by default.

See how selective disclosure satisfies a supervisor without publishing your book to the world.