Countdown in Da Nang: Vietnam’s First Licensed Crypto Exchanges Are Weeks Away — A Report from the Ground

Vietnam has spent years as one of the world’s largest crypto markets without a single legal venue to trade on. That era is ending now — and the city this report is written from is where the transformation is being built.

Da Nang, Vietnam’s central-coast tech hub, is the officially designated sandbox for the country’s digital asset experiment. Here’s why the coming weeks matter, and what it looks like on the ground.

Q3 2026: The launch window is open

On May 12, 2026, Deputy Finance Minister Nguyen Duc Chi told the Digital Trust in Finance forum in Hanoi that Vietnam’s first officially regulated crypto asset trading could begin as early as the third quarter of 2026 — the quarter that has just started. Five companies have received preliminary approval from the Ministry of Finance, in coordination with the Ministry of Public Security and the State Bank of Vietnam, to operate licensed trading platforms. [1][2]

The shortlisted candidates, according to Vietnamese and international reporting, read like a who’s who of Vietnamese finance: entities linked to Techcombank (TCEX), VPBank (CAEX — reportedly backed by OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital), LPBank (SCEX, formerly LPEX), securities firm VIX (VIXEX), and conglomerate Sun Group (Vietnam Digital Assets JSC). [2][3]

The regulatory foundation is Resolution 05/2025/NQ-CP, issued September 9, 2025, which created a five-year pilot for the crypto asset market. The entry bar is brutal by design: minimum charter capital of VND 10 trillion (roughly USD 380 million), at least 65% held by institutional investors, and foreign ownership capped at 49%. All transactions must settle in Vietnamese dong. [4][5]

And there’s a stick attached to the carrot. The resolution’s text is explicit: six months after the first crypto asset service provider is licensed, domestic investors transacting outside licensed platforms face administrative sanctions or even criminal prosecution. [4] With an estimated USD 100+ billion in annual transaction volumes, roughly 17–21 million crypto users and a top-five global adoption ranking, Vietnam isn’t asking its traders to come onshore. It’s ordering them to. [5][6]

On the tax side, the Ministry of Finance plans a 0.1% personal income tax on crypto transactions through licensed platforms — the same rate applied to stock trading — plus 20% corporate income tax on crypto-related business profits. [3]

Why Da Nang?

Since January 9, 2026, Da Nang has hosted one of the two hubs of the Vietnam International Financial Centre (VIFC), inaugurated at Software Park No. 2 under Government Decree 323 (December 18, 2025), which itself implements National Assembly Resolution 222/2025/QH15 of June 2025. [7][8]

The VIFC operates as “one center, two locations”: Ho Chi Minh City handles the classic full-spectrum financial ecosystem — capital markets, investment banking, asset management — while Da Nang is explicitly positioned as the technology-driven hub for innovation, digital assets, digital payments and regulatory sandboxes. [8]

The physical heart of it is Software Park No. 2 near the Han River, where the city is finalizing a 20-storey building with more than 27,000 square metres of floor space, designed to attract investment funds, tech firms and startups — and to pilot digital assets, cryptocurrencies and digital payments under sandbox mechanisms. [7]

The member list tells you how seriously the crypto industry takes this. VIFC–Da Nang’s twelve founding members include Bybit Technology, Makara Capital and 9Pay, while Binance, Tether, DTCpay, Abu Dhabi Global Market, the Swiss Fintech Association and Frankfurt Main Finance have signed cooperation agreements with the city. [8]

Tether went furthest: on November 5, 2025, the USDT issuer signed an MoU with the Da Nang People’s Committee covering blockchain policy development, sandbox experimentation, tokenization of real-world assets, and education programs with Vietnamese universities — drawing on its Plan ₿ experience from Lugano. CEO Paolo Ardoino called Da Nang “the future of digital governance in Southeast Asia.” [9]

City officials have been refreshingly blunt about the strategy: Da Nang wants to be a billion-dollar fintech sandbox, not a skyline of skyscrapers — a bid to capture part of an estimated USD 220 billion in crypto assets flowing into Vietnam each year that remains largely invisible to regulators. [10]

The tourist angle: crypto-to-cash is already live here

Da Nang isn’t just writing policy — real crypto-fiat rails are already running, aimed squarely at the city’s massive tourist flows.

Da Nang is currently the only locality in Vietnam with two regulator-approved sandbox models for crypto asset conversion. [11]

Basal Pay, developed by AlphaTrue Solutions and approved by the Da Nang People’s Committee on August 26, 2025, is Vietnam’s first licensed crypto-to-fiat conversion pilot. It targets foreign visitors, converts crypto assets to Vietnamese dong in seconds, integrates the FATF Travel Rule with a three-tier identity verification system, stores transaction records for five years, and claims costs roughly 30% below traditional channels. The 36-month pilot runs in five phases under supervision of the city’s Department of Science and Technology. [12][13]

MIMO, by Dragon Lab JSC, is a non-custodial intermediary platform for USDT↔VND conversion, approved for a three-year pilot from December 18, 2025 to December 17, 2028. Both pilots operate at the same three locations: Software Park No. 1 (Quang Trung St.), Software Park No. 2 (Nhu Nguyet St.), and the Da Nang Innovation Startup Support Center (Nguyen Chi Thanh St.). [11]

For travelers who prefer the old-school route, BitcoinVN’s Cash Office in Hai Chau ward exchanges more than 80 cryptocurrencies — including Bitcoin over Lightning and Liquid, USDT, USDC and Monero — for dong cash, no account registration required, at up to roughly VND 50 million per transaction. You send crypto to a displayed address, support contacts you within the hour, and you collect cash at the counter. [14][15]

The practical upshot: in July 2026, a tourist can land in Da Nang and fund a beach holiday from a Lightning wallet — inside a government-supervised framework. Two years ago that sentence would have been science fiction in Vietnam.

The pipes are being laid — literally

There’s a hardware layer to this story that most crypto coverage misses. Da Nang is getting a major upgrade to its physical connection to the global internet: the Asia Link Cable (ALC), a roughly 6,200 km subsea system connecting Hong Kong, Hainan, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia with a design capacity above 325 Tbps. The ALC made landfall in Hong Kong on May 14, 2026, and is expected to enter commercial service later this year. [16][17]

Vietnam’s landing station for the system is being built in Da Nang by Viettel together with FPT Telecom — FPT’s first ever project as a landing party, backed by an USD 87 million investment. [18][19] For a country whose international connectivity has historically depended on a handful of fault-prone subsea cables, that redundancy matters: an exchange settling in dong on Vietnamese soil can’t afford the multi-week outages that used to plague the country’s links.

One honest caveat for readers who follow Vietnam’s tech scene: Da Nang is not a semiconductor manufacturing town — chip fabrication and electronics mass production sit in the north around Haiphong and Bac Ninh. Da Nang’s strength is software, services and now finance. For an exchange hub, that’s exactly the right profile: what it needs is bandwidth, talent and rules, not fabs.

The bigger picture: from grey zone to grey-list exit

There’s a geopolitical subtext worth understanding. Vietnam sits on the FATF grey list, and the compliance-heavy design of these pilots — Travel Rule integration, five-year record keeping, mandatory dong settlement — is largely about proving AML/CFT credibility to international watchdogs. Basal Pay’s own project director framed the sandbox as urgent precisely because of the grey-list pressure. [13]

The legal groundwork is layered: the Law on Digital Technology Industry, in force since January 1, 2026, gave digital assets legal status for the first time; Resolution 05 built the pilot market on top; Resolution 222 gave Da Nang and HCMC the special mechanisms to test what national law doesn’t yet allow. [4][6][8]

What to watch in the coming weeks

1. The first license. The Ministry of Finance could greenlight one of the five shortlisted exchanges any week now — that starts the six-month offshore countdown. [1][4]
2. Which of the five goes live first. The bank-backed contenders (Techcombank’s TCEX, VPBank’s CAEX) are widely seen as front-runners. [2][3]
3. Basal Pay’s expansion phase. The 36-month roadmap moves from limited release toward scaling — more merchants and touchpoints in Da Nang would be the visible signal. [12]
4. The ALC cable going live. Commercial service is expected later in 2026; once the Da Nang landing station is active, the city’s connectivity argument becomes concrete. [16]
5. The VIFC tower opening fully at Software Park No. 2, and which international firms take space. [7]

Da Nang has quietly become one of the most interesting crypto datelines in Asia. The exchanges launching this quarter will decide whether Vietnam’s massive shadow market actually comes onshore — and this beach city is where the answer takes shape first.

Disclosure: This article is for information purposes only and is not investment advice.

Sources

1. Cryptopolitan — “Vietnam teases official launch of domestic crypto sector in Q3 2026” (May 13, 2026): https://www.cryptopolitan.com/vietnam-domestic-crypto-sector-q3-2026/
2. CoinCentral — “Vietnam Eyes First Regulated Crypto Trading by Q3 2026” (May 13, 2026): https://coincentral.com/vietnam-eyes-first-regulated-crypto-trading-by-q3-2026/
3. CryptocurrencyHelp — “Vietnam Plans Crypto Market Rules Launch in Q3 2026” (May 14, 2026): https://cryptocurrencyhelp.com/news/vietnam-crypto-market-rules-q3-2026/
4. Resolution No. 05/2025/NQ-CP (official English translation, LuatVietnam, Sept 9, 2025): https://english.luatvietnam.vn/resolution-no-05-2025-nq-cp-dated-september-09-2025-of-the-government-on-piloting-the-crypto-asset-market-in-vietnam-410830-doc1.html
5. US-ASEAN Business Council — “Vietnam Launches Five-Year Pilot Program to Regulate Crypto Trading” (Oct 2025): https://www.usasean.org/article/vietnam-launches-five-year-pilot-program-regulate-crypto-trading
6. Russin & Vecchi — “Vietnam’s Crypto Asset Regulation Framework: From Gray Zone To A Controlled Pilot Market” (2026): https://www.russinvecchi.com.vn/publication/vietnams-crypto-asset-regulation-framework-from-gray-zone-to-a-controlled-pilot-market/
7. VietnamPlus — “Vietnam launches International Financial Centre in Da Nang” (Jan 9, 2026): https://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-launches-international-financial-centre-in-da-nang-post335667.vnp
8. US-ASEAN Business Council — “Vietnam Launches Ambitious International Finance Initiative” (Mar 2026): https://www.usasean.org/article/vietnam-launches-ambitious-international-finance-initiative
9. Tether (official) — “Tether and Da Nang City Sign MoU to Advance Blockchain-Powered Digital Governance and Infrastructure” (Nov 5, 2025): https://tether.io/news/tether-and-da-nang-city-sign-mou-to-advance-blockchain-powered-digital-governance-and-infrastructure/
10. VietnamPlus — “Da Nang targets crypto inflows with bold fintech sandbox push” (Apr 2026): https://en.vietnamplus.vn/da-nang-targets-crypto-inflows-with-bold-fintech-sandbox-push-post341237.vnp
11. Da Nang Today (official city paper) — “Da Nang becomes Vietnam’s only locality with two approved sandbox models for crypto asset conversion” (Mar 2026): https://en.baodanang.vn/da-nang-becomes-vietnam-s-only-locality-with-two-approved-sandbox-models-for-crypto-asset-conversion-3327646.html
12. VietnamPlus — “Vietnam approves first sandbox trial for crypto asset conversion project” (Aug 27, 2025): https://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-approves-first-sandbox-trial-for-crypto-asset-conversion-project-post325410.vnp
13. Fintech News Singapore — “Vietnam Greenlights Crypto-to-Fiat Sandbox Trial in Da Nang” (Aug 28, 2025): https://fintechnews.sg/116768/crypto/da-nang-crypto-sandbox/
14. BitcoinVN — “Cash Withdrawal in Da Nang: How Does It Work?”: https://bitcoinvn.io/news/cash-withdrawal-in-da-nang/
15. BitcoinVN — “New Cash Office Location: Da Nang”: https://bitcoinvn.io/news/new-cash-office-location-da-nang/
16. Submarine Networks — “ALC Lands in Hong Kong, Strengthening Asia’s Subsea Backbone” (May 15, 2026): https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/intra-asia/alc/alc-lands-in-hong-kong,-strengthening-asia-s-subsea-backbone
17. Data Center Dynamics — “China Telecom lands Asia Link Cable in Hong Kong” (May 27, 2026): https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/china-telecom-lands-asia-link-cable-in-hong-kong/
18. Submarine Networks — “Vietnam” (cable landing stations overview; Viettel–FPT Da Nang CLS for ALC): https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/stations/asia/vietnam
19. Submarine Networks — “FPT Telecom Invests $87 million in Asia Link Cable (ALC) Project”: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/intra-asia/alc/fpt-telecom-invests-87-million-in-asia-link-cable-alc-project