The most important exemption-style question is not whether a person touches crypto, but whether that person provides a covered service for the benefit of somebody else. Holding or dealing only with one’s own assets can fall outside VASP registration, but small changes in the facts can turn private activity into a customer service.
Holding your own virtual assets
A company or individual does not become a VASP merely because it owns virtual assets for itself. Buying, holding or disposing of treasury assets on one’s own account is different from accepting another person’s assets, instructions or mandate. The distinction should be evidenced through contracts, accounts, wallets, decision rights and accounting records.
The NBG’s own-funds P2P example
The National Bank’s published FAQ explains a narrow case: a person exchanging only its own funds or virtual-asset resources as a client of a VASP or trading platform, with another client of that same VASP, without an arrangement with a third party and without providing a service for that third party, is not subject to VASP registration for that activity.
Pure software can be outside the perimeter—but facts matter
A business that supplies code, infrastructure or analytics to an independently accountable VASP may be a technology vendor rather than the provider of the regulated service. The analysis changes if it contracts with end customers, controls customer assets or keys, makes transaction decisions, holds credentials needed to move assets, or presents itself as the service operator.
Non-custodial products require a control test
“Non-custodial” is not a magic phrase. The review should examine key generation, signing, recovery, upgrade powers, smart-contract administration, transaction ordering and emergency controls. A product can be technically decentralised in one respect while the company retains a practical instrument enabling control in another.
Group treasury and intra-group arrangements
A group may buy or move its own virtual assets without offering a public service. However, separate legal entities, charges, mandates, pooled wallets, intercompany execution and services to affiliates need analysis. Corporate separateness matters: one group company can still provide a service for the benefit of another.
Out of VASP scope is not the end of legal analysis
An activity outside VASP registration can still engage payment, securities, investment, lending, consumer, data-protection, sanctions, tax, corporate or contractual rules. Georgia also restricts payment for ordinary goods and services with virtual assets, subject to specific cases allowed for virtual-asset services. A responsible opinion states what was reviewed, what was not, and which factual changes require re-assessment.
Evidence a defensible out-of-scope position
- Document the owner of every wallet, account and asset.
- Show that no third-party mandate or customer instruction is accepted.
- Record how revenue is earned and whether any fee, spread or commission relates to a third-party service.
- Define the boundary between software support and operational control.
- Place change triggers into product governance so the conclusion is revisited before launch of a new feature.
CryptoLicense.ge can prepare a model-specific scope memorandum. Where the answer is “registration not currently required,” the deliverable records the assumptions and red lines instead of selling an unnecessary filing.
Official materials used for this guide
These links support the editorial baseline; the explanation above is written for founders and operators. Current consolidated legislation and later official instruments take priority.