British Virgin Islands
Structural confidentiality kept, transactional confidentiality not
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.
Related entries
- Cayman IslandsAmericas · A mature regime that never addresses confidentiality
- ArgentinaAmericas · Self-custody providers written out of the regime
- CaliforniaAmericas · A licensing regime that arrived in July 2026
- CanadaAmericas · Delistings without a rule that names the assets
- United StatesAmericas · Split by perimeter, not by ideology
- BahamasAmericas · Issuance of privacy tokens barred, trading not
Compliant by default.
See how selective disclosure satisfies a supervisor without publishing your book to the world.