Philippine central bank bans VASPs from listing privacy…

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has explicitly prohibited virtual asset service providers (VASPs) operating in the Philippines from listing or supporting privacy-enhancing virtual assets — effectively banning coins such as Monero and Zcash from regulated Philippine crypto platforms.

Alongside the outright ban on privacy assets, the BSP ordered VASPs to tighten their token listing, monitoring, and delisting standards. Regulated platforms must now conduct formal due diligence on every listed asset and maintain active delisting triggers for tokens that fall out of compliance with listing requirements.

Why it matters

The BSP's move aligns the Philippines with a growing wave of regulators — including the EU under MiCA and Japan's FSA — that have moved to restrict or ban privacy coins on the grounds that anonymity-enhancing features are structurally incompatible with anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing obligations. For VASPs in the Philippines, the compliance window is now closed: there is no carve-out or grace period signalled in the directive.

Market impact

Privacy-focused tokens face direct exchange delistings across Philippine platforms, compressing local liquidity. The broader signal for the Asia-Pacific regulatory corridor is negative for privacy assets: as one of the region's more active retail crypto markets, a BSP ban carries weight with neighbouring regulators still drafting their own VASP frameworks. Operators with regional exposure should audit their listing books now.