Gibraltar providing legal & regulatory certainty to creators of NFT collections

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are digital units on a blockchain that can represent ownership of an underlying asset, such as digital art. NFTs were already rising in popularity during 2020 and early 2021 but the moonshot happened when Mike Winkelmann (the digital artist known as Beeple) sold his collage "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" for $69 million at Christie's on 11 March 2021.

This event made everyone sit up and listen. NFTs were no longer just something that the "crypto gang" talked about and invested in; covered by all media outlets, this sale marked the entry of NFTs into the mainstream.

As with all things, with the good comes the bad. NFTs started getting targeted as a means to launder money and for fraudulent activity. 

The United States Department of the Treasury’s recent publication of its “Study of the Facilitation of Money Laundering and Terror Finance Through the Trade in Works of Art” introduced the ‘emerging digital art market,’ and for the first time, opened up serious attention at the government level on NFTs from a money laundering and terrorist financing perspective.

NFT creators are feeling the heat and are looking for ways to launch their collections in a manner which is compliant with AML rules. Enter Gibraltar.

Gibraltar is the perfect jurisdiction from which to launch an NFT collection. The NFT issuing entity will need to register as a VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) with the GFSC (Gibraltar Financial Services Commission). This registration is focused on AML compliance allowing NFT creators to work with the peace of mind of being compliant. The registration is proving to be very beneficial in respect of conversations that these entities are having with participants in the NFT sale, banks, crypto custodians, etc. 

The registration is also a way of standing out from the NFT crowd. In a space where money-grabbers and rug pulls are, unfortunately, very real, the comfort of a well structured NFT sale may help attract more interest. 

For further information on structuring your NFT or token sale out of Gibraltar, do not hesitate to contact me: 

Email: aaron.payas@hassans.gi

ENS: AaronPYS.eth