5小时前
· CoinTelegraph
The British Virgin Islands are a top crypto hub no one ever talks about: Here’s why
Kraken, Bitstamp, 1inch and Bitfinex have all set up shop in the British Virgin Islands — but you might find it tricky to book an on-site meeting with one of their executives.
More than $1 out of every $10 of the world’s tokenized US Treasuries is issued by a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.
That places the small Caribbean territory behind only the United States as a key jurisdiction for the rapidly growing asset class, according to BVI Finance.
BVI Finance’s Destination Digital <a href="https://app-na2.hubspotdocuments.com/documents/50987358/view/1819490029?accessId=27a090" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">>report</a> in June found that BVI entities accounted for approximately $1.5 billion of the $14.98 billion global market for tokenized US Treasuries as of June 1.
A growing list of digital asset firms now call the British Virgin Islands home, including Kraken’s parent company, Payward, Bitstamp (recently acquired by Robinhood), 1inch and Bitfinex.
The territory boasts a stablecoin market cap of about $1.2 billion held in BVI-linked addresses and has roughly 28,000 stablecoin asset holders.
More than 25 virtual asset service providers (VASPs) have been approved under the BVI’s VASP regime, and, according to Bernstein Research, the Islands host 305 tokenized securities — the highest count for any single jurisdiction in the RWA.xyz dataset.
<em>US tokenized securities distributed value by jurisdiction. Source: Destination Digital</em>
The statistics suggest the Virgin Islands has become one of the world’s top crypto hotspots, but the reality is a little more nuanced.
Tokenized assets are designed to be borderless, and crypto projects often have the choice of which offshore jurisdiction to incorporate in.
In most cases, digital asset companies aren’t physically relocating to the Virgin Islands; they’re simply using the territory to incorporate legal entities, such as token issuers, treasury vehicles, holding companies or special purpose vehicles (SPVs).
Andrew Jowett, a partner at Appleby (BVI) Ltd who advises digital asset businesses on corporate structuring, told Cointelegraph that clients researching the BVI typically compare several jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Switzerland.
Despite long-held assumptions about offshore Caribbean tax havens, tax neutrality is no longer the primary driver.
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“The overriding factor for choosing the BVI has been digital asset regulation and not tax,” Jowett said. The British overseas territory does have attractive tax policies, and <a href="https://www.bvifsc.vg/faq/what-tax-structure-bvi" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">>imposes</a> no corporate income tax or capital gains tax