GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Eco­nom­ic an­a­lyst Mar­i­ano Browne says T&T’s new­ly passed cryp­tocur­ren­cy leg­is­la­tion is “a con­ser­v­a­tive but nec­es­sary move” to bring dig­i­tal fi­nance un­der reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight.

On Fri­day, Par­lia­ment passed the Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Act, 2025, to reg­u­late cryp­tocur­ren­cies and re­lat­ed ser­vices.

The leg­is­la­tion es­tab­lish­es a li­cens­ing frame­work for vir­tu­al as­set ac­tiv­i­ties and aligns with Caribbean an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and counter-ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing stan­dards.

The bill aims to com­ply with the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF).

Speak­ing dur­ing CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew Pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Browne ex­plained this is part of a broad­er tech­no­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion, as he not­ed that T&T al­ready has ear­ly in­vestors in cryp­tocur­ren­cy—not just in­di­vid­u­als buy­ing to­kens, but those who in­vest­ed in com­pa­nies.

“One of the com­pa­nies, Bit­coin, I think was formed ac­tu­al­ly un­der Bar­ba­dos law. So the peo­ple who are com­plain­ing, in a sense, have a vest­ed in­ter­est. They’re look­ing at how their in­ter­ests are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed,” he ex­plained.

How­ev­er, the for­mer min­is­ter in the min­istry of fi­nance stressed that reg­u­la­tion is es­sen­tial.

“You have to have a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for al­most every­thing. Cryp­tocur­ren­cy came in­to the world with­out reg­u­la­tion, and most fi­nan­cial de­vel­op­ments start that way. Even­tu­al­ly, be­cause they be­come suc­cess­ful, they fall with­in the de­f­i­n­i­tion,” he said.

He point­ed to cas­es of fraud linked to cryp­to in North Amer­i­ca, which prompt­ed stricter over­sight there. Browne al­so not­ed that the Act takes a very con­ser­v­a­tive po­si­tion with re­spect to the reg­is­tra­tion of com­pa­nies and tries to bring them un­der the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC).

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns that the leg­is­la­tion could sti­fle in­no­va­tion, Browne dis­missed the no­tion, stat­ing that in­no­va­tion would go on “whether we like it or not, as the na­ture of in­no­va­tion is go­ing to take place, “as he al­so added that “cryp­tocur­ren­cy is very much a wait-and-see game.”

Browne al­so spoke about T&T’s slow progress to­ward a cash­less so­ci­ety, warn­ing that the coun­try is “be­hind the eight ball” when it comes to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry readi­ness.

Speak­ing on the top­ic of elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tems, Browne em­pha­sised that gov­ern­ments world­wide are mov­ing cau­tious­ly but de­lib­er­ate­ly to­ward cash­less frame­works.

“If they have an elec­tron­ic sys­tem, I want to be able to see it,” he said, stress­ing the need for trans­paren­cy and over­sight. “And then I have to ad­just my reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment as well as my tax en­vi­ron­ment to take it in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.”

Browne not­ed that im­ple­ment­ing a ro­bust dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture is not just a tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenge but a gov­er­nance one.

He ex­plained that any elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tem must be trans­par­ent and in­te­grat­ed in­to reg­u­la­to­ry and tax frame­works. This means gov­ern­ment agen­cies would need to adapt poli­cies to en­sure prop­er over­sight and com­pli­ance, he said.

Browne fur­ther em­pha­sised that dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is at the core of the is­sue, adding that the suc­cess of such a sys­tem de­pends on how it is im­ple­ment­ed and mon­i­tored at the na­tion­al lev­el.

He al­so main­tained that the abil­i­ty to track trans­ac­tions and fol­low the flow of mon­ey is crit­i­cal for ac­count­abil­i­ty and ef­fec­tive reg­u­la­tion.

Browne is the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.