Finance and Digital Assets is one of the eight priority industries of the Gelephu Mindfulness City, and GMC wrote virtual assets into the Financial Services Act 2025 itself: a virtual asset is a digital representation of value that is digitally tradeable and not legal tender anywhere, and providing custody of virtual assets, operating a multilateral or organised trading facility on which they are traded, arranging deals in them, dealing in them as principal and issuing a fiat-referenced token are each regulated activities licensed by the Gelephu Financial Services Office, the single regulator of financial services and virtual asset activities in GMC. The General Prohibition bars any person from carrying on a regulated activity by way of business in GMC without a licence, and an agreement made in breach of it is unenforceable against the counterparty. Mining, validating and staking one's own assets are not listed as regulated activities; what can become regulated is what follows, such as selling output to third parties, holding tokens for others or pooling contributions. A pure order-routing system is not a trading facility, and group and supplier transactions have their own exclusions. Every licensed firm must comply with the anti-money laundering and sanctions rulebook, have Approved Persons in its controlled functions and keep its head office in GMC; capital and client-asset requirements sit in the rulebooks rather than the Act. Licensing follows a published seven-step process to in-principle approval, with a fast-track review for firms already licensed in Singapore, Abu Dhabi Global Market or Hong Kong that is not passporting. The company rate is 15% under the Income Tax Act 2025, non-citizen individuals pay 0% until 31 December 2030, and hardware can be written off on an accelerated basis. Financial promotions, including websites and whitepapers, are restricted unless an exemption applies.
Basnet Law Pte. Ltd. advises exchanges, custodians, token and stablecoin issuers, miners, treasuries and protocol teams on perimeter analysis, GFSO licence applications from the initial meeting through in-principle approval, Approved Persons and anti-money laundering programmes, token classification, platform and custody terms, financial promotion review, bank account and treasury structuring, tax, and disputes.
