Which provisions of Kenya matter for confidential transactions?

Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, No. 20 of 2025: assented 15 October 2025, gazetted 21 October and commenced 4 November 2025, amending the Capital Markets Act, the Central Bank of Kenya Act and the anti-money-laundering statute. Section 21(1)(a): a provider shall not undertake mixer or tumbler services or anonymity-enhancing services, the latter defined as transactions with the effect or intention of concealing information. Criminal, not administrative: breach is an offence under section 40(3), which makes this materially harder to reverse than a regulator-made rule. Split supervision under section 5: custody, payments and stablecoin issuance to the central bank; exchanges, brokerage, tokenisation and offerings to the markets authority

Where does Kenya apply?

Middle East & Africa, administered by Capital Markets Authority · Central Bank of Kenya · Data Protection Commissioner. Subject: The ban written into primary legislation, not a rulebook.

Kenya

Q: Can confidential on-chain transactions comply with Kenya?

Restricts anonymity. Anonymity-enhancing assets or unattributed transfers are barred outright, or barred for regulated firms.

The ban written into primary legislation, not a rulebook

All regulation entries

JurisdictionMiddle East & AfricaRestricts anonymity

Anonymity-enhancing assets or unattributed transfers are barred outright, or barred for regulated firms.

What Kenya actually says

Most prohibitions in this section live in rulebooks that a regulator can amend without going back to a legislature. Kenya's does not. The 2025 Act puts the restriction in primary law: a service provider may not undertake mixer or tumbler services, or anonymity-enhancing services, with the latter defined broadly enough to reach any transaction whose effect or intention is to conceal information. Breach is a criminal offence. That drafting choice matters more than its content, because it sets a much higher bar for reversal than the Gulf rulebooks that reach a similar result. Note also what the definition catches: it turns on effect, not on the name of an asset, so it is technique-neutral by design.

The instruments that matter

Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, No. 20 of 2025: assented 15 October 2025, gazetted 21 October and commenced 4 November 2025, amending the Capital Markets Act, the Central Bank of Kenya Act and the anti-money-laundering statute
Section 21(1)(a): a provider shall not undertake mixer or tumbler services or anonymity-enhancing services, the latter defined as transactions with the effect or intention of concealing information
Criminal, not administrative: breach is an offence under section 40(3), which makes this materially harder to reverse than a regulator-made rule
Split supervision under section 5: custody, payments and stablecoin issuance to the central bank; exchanges, brokerage, tokenisation and offerings to the markets authority

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.

Security & compliance How Bubble works

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