I spoke with at­tor­ney and Fin­tech ad­vo­cate Bel­li­na Bar­row about the Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill. She agreed with me that the bill need­ed to be re­draft­ed, as it would neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T’s at­trac­tive­ness to po­ten­tial cryp­tocur­ren­cy in­vestors.

Bar­row had a wealth of knowl­edge on the cryp­to space, which she shared with me in an ex­clu­sive quote for the T&T Guardian.

“Vir­tu­al As­sets (VA), in par­tic­u­lar cryp­tocur­ren­cies, have gained trac­tion. Chainal­y­sis’ Ju­ly 2025 Road to Cryp­to Reg­u­la­tion Re­port Part One states that 25 ju­ris­dic­tions ac­count for 73 per cent of the glob­al cryp­to mar­ket.

“The top 5 in­clude: the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed King­dom, Rus­sia (sus­pend­ed from FATF in 2023), In­done­sia and In­dia. T&T, though small as com­pared to those top 5, is al­so ranked as #137 in Chainal­y­sis’ 2024 Glob­al Cryp­to Adop­tion In­dex in its Ge­og­ra­phy of Cryp­to Re­port 2024 (Chainal­y­sis, like El­lip­tic, is a blockchain an­a­lyt­ics firms that as­sist FATF and gov­ern­ments).

“Against that back­drop, our long-await­ed VA Bill was an­ti-cli­mac­tic. In­dus­try ac­tors have been ob­serv­ing the T&T mar­ket for some time and wait­ing for this leg­is­la­tion to de­cide on their next move. This move can amount to a myr­i­ad of macro and mi­cro-lev­el ben­e­fits, which I cov­ered in my last jour­nal ar­ti­cle.

“Like tra­di­tion­al fi­nance, the cryp­to in­dus­try has dif­fer­ent ac­tors who, with clear leg­is­la­tion, can op­er­ate in a reg­u­lat­ed en­vi­ron­ment which fa­cil­i­tates busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to—cryp­to ex­changes, cryp­toas­set ATMs, of­fer­ing cryp­to pre­paid cards, etc. And be­cause ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is use­ful in the fi­nance sec­tor, af­ter a prop­er risk as­sess­ment, gov­er­nance analy­sis and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, this could lend it­self to the pos­si­ble es­tab­lish­ment of a re­gion­al AI da­ta cen­tre.”

Bar­row then turned to the rel­e­vance of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF), an in­ter­na­tion­al an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing watch­dog which makes rec­om­men­da­tions im­pact­ing the Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill.

“I ac­cept that the bill was in­tro­duced to give ef­fect to FATF Rec­om­men­da­tions 15 & 16, which is the gen­e­sis for an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and counter fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism (AML/CFT) reg­u­la­tion for VA and VASPs, and the fifth round of FATF mu­tu­al eval­u­a­tions will be oc­cur­ring soon. How­ev­er, while this bill may be a place­hold­er of sorts, un­til a more ex­ten­sive law is in­tro­duced, it po­ten­tial­ly thwarts the slew of ben­e­fits the in­dus­try of­fers.

“What lo­cal fin­tech and cryp­to ac­tors were ex­pect­ing was a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from the E-Mon­ey Is­suer Or­der, 2020 (as amend­ed) to com­pre­hen­sive vir­tu­al as­sets law and reg­u­la­tion.

“As it cur­rent­ly stands, in the ab­sence of a com­plete over­haul, I sug­gest­ed sev­en pri­or­i­ty amend­ments to the lead­er­ship of the lo­cal Fin­tech As­so­ci­a­tion.

“These amend­ments touched on the de­f­i­n­i­tion of Wal­let Ser­vice Providers, in­cor­po­ra­tion of for­eign VASPs, ad­di­tions to what is and what is not con­sid­ered VA ac­tiv­i­ty, short­en­ing the mora­to­ri­um to end in 2026 and in­tro­duc­ing a sand­box­ing li­cens­ing regime which will al­low reg­is­trants to con­tin­ue to op­er­ate, per­mit­ting ad­ver­tis­ing by these sand­box li­cence hold­ers and in­clu­sion of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the VA sec­tor in the le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry process­es; as far as is pos­si­ble. This pub­lic-pri­vate col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is in line with UNS­DG17 and ju­ris­dic­tions like Kenya and the UK, and it can be help­ful in al­le­vi­at­ing the chal­lenge of any tech­ni­cal skills gaps and re­source re­straints.”

In the jour­nal ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the UWI St Au­gus­tine Law jour­nal, en­ti­tled “The Un­re­alised Ben­e­fits of the Cryp­to Sec­tor,” Bar­row not­ed that courts in the Com­mon­wealth have al­ready recog­nised cryp­tocur­ren­cy and vir­tu­al as­sets in a se­ries of judge­ments.

The fol­low­ing is a para­phrased quote from her ar­ti­cle.

“Dif­fer­ent courts have recog­nised the pro­pri­etary sta­tus of cryp­to as­sets. This is ev­i­dent in the Hong Kong case of Re­Gate­coin Lim­it­ed (In Liq­ui­da­tion) [2023] HKC­FI 914, in which the Ho­n­ourable Madam Jus­tice Lin­da Chan re­counts the cas­es from com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions and al­so makes ref­er­ence to cas­es em­a­nat­ing from the Unit­ed States.

“In the Eng­lish case of AA v Per­sons un­known [2020] 4 WLR 35 it was held that cryp­to as­sets, such as Bit­coin, while not fit­ting neat­ly with­in ei­ther of the two Eng­lish prop­er­ty law cat­e­gories, based on the four fea­tures laid down in Na­tion­al Provin­cial Bank v Ainsworth [1965] AC 1175—be­ing de­fin­able, iden­ti­fi­able by third par­ties, ca­pa­ble in its na­ture of as­sump­tion by third par­ties and hav­ing some de­gree of per­ma­nence, was a form of prop­er­ty ca­pa­ble of be­ing the sub­ject of an in­ter­im pro­pri­etary in­junc­tion.”

For­tu­nate­ly, if our lo­cal courts are to de­cide on any cryp­tocur­ren­cy or VA cas­es, there would be suf­fi­cient prece­dent from the Com­mon­wealth.

In clos­ing, I agreed with Bar­row that the present Vir­tu­al As­sets Bill can on­ly op­er­ate as a place­hold­er, as it has the po­ten­tial to scare off mil­lions of dol­lars of po­ten­tial in­vest­ment in cryp­to-min­ing or in high-net-worth in­di­vid­u­als who may want to cash out the cryp­tocur­ren­cy in­to in­vest­ments in T&T.

In my view, the Gov­ern­ment should part­ner with cryp­to in­vestors to bring in for­eign in­vest­ment in crit­i­cal ar­eas like agri­cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy and tourism.

If for­eign­ers could pur­chase eq­ui­ty in lo­cal com­pa­nies us­ing cryp­to, it may spur growth in our econ­o­my and bring in as­sets which can be trad­ed for US dol­lars.