Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas bars VASPs from listing privacy tokens
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas bars VASPs from listing privacy tokens
https://cryptobriefing.com/bsp-bans-vasps-privacy-tokens/
Publish Date: 2026-06-14 03:26:00
Source Domain: cryptobriefing.com
The Philippines just drew a hard line against privacy coins. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s central bank, has approved a memorandum that flatly prohibits licensed virtual asset service providers from listing or supporting any anonymity-enhancing virtual assets.
Memorandum No. M-2026-023, approved on June 5, 2026, effectively makes the Philippines one of the latest jurisdictions to take a regulatory sledgehammer to privacy-focused tokens. Every registered VASP operating in the country, including major platforms like Coins.ph and PDAX, must now comply.
What the new rules actually require
The core prohibition is straightforward: if a token is designed to obscure transaction details, licensed Philippine exchanges can’t touch it. The BSP didn’t name specific tokens in the memorandum, but the category broadly encompasses coins built with anonymity-enhancing features that make transaction tracing difficult or impossible.
But the memo goes well beyond just banning privacy coins. It introduces a significantly more demanding pre-listing evaluation framework for all virtual assets.
VASPs must now conduct deeper reviews before adding any token to their platforms. These assessments cover security, liquidity, and utility, essentially forcing exchanges to build a comprehensive case for why a given asset deserves a listing in the first place.
For asset-backed and fiat-backed tokens specifically, the BSP is requiring what it calls a “lifecycle assessment.” In English: exchanges need to evaluate not just a token’s current state, but its entire economic model from issuance through redemption, including the credibility of the issuer and the robustness of the backing mechanism.
The issuer’s background and regulatory compliance history also factor into the evaluation.
The broader regulatory context
The central bank’s oversight of virtual assets dates back to at least 2017, making the Philippines one of the earlier movers in…
