Industry 4.0 was driving a boom of digital and virtual assets, requiring regulations to be raised to ensure its on-track development and management of asset ownership rights. (Photo laodong.vn) Currently, digital and virtual assets have not been recognised as property in Vietnam.
Experts said that the existing legal framework of Vietnam was encounteringdifficulties in tolerating new types of assets in the Industry 4.0 era.
Le Thuy Nga from the Institute of Legal Science pointed out that Vietnam hadnot had a legal corridor to identify the owners and transactions of assets ofnew technology applications.
This caused uncertainty in protecting individuals' rights or interests in theholding, transferring, and inheritance of crypto assets, especially in cases ofprotection against theft or expropriation.
The Law on Corporate Income Tax and the Law on Personal Income Tax were notapplicable for transactions of crypto assets, Nga said.
Due to the lack of a clear legal framework, tax authority could not collecttaxes from investing and trading in crypto assets, while it also confusedmanaging other sectors such as opening cryptocurrency exchanges or launchinginitial coin offerings to raise capital.
Nga said that the lack of regulation, together with low awareness of residentsabout virtual assets and cryptocurrency, also recently led to an explosion offraudulent activities. The confusion between the concepts of cryptocurrency anddigital assets also caused problems in State management.
From a legal perspective, Nga said that cryptocurrency was not recognised as alegal currency and payment method in Vietnam, adding that it was necessary tohave regulations clearly distinguish cryptocurrency from electronic assets.
Experts said that the biggest legal problem with asset ownership in the contextof the Industry 4.0 lay in the fact that there were no rules that clarifydigital assets.
At the third session of the 15th National Assembly in June, Governor of theState Bank of Vietnam Nguyen Thi Hong said that it was necessary to clarifyelectronic money, cryptocurrency and virtual assets.
Hong said that electronic money was an electronic store of monetary value on atechnical device, adding that the decree about cashless payment was beingamended to clarify this definition.
Like bitcoin, Hong said, cryptocurrency and virtual assets had not beenrecognised as legal currencies issued by central banks. These currencies wereonly identified in specific communities such as gaming or technology.
Each country had a different way of managing virtual currency. For Vietnam,relevant ministries and agencies were studying the legal framework forcryptocurrency./.
VNA
