VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider)
Definition
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) term for businesses that exchange, transfer, or custody cryptocurrency on behalf of customers. VASPs are subject to anti-money laundering obligations including KYC, transaction monitoring, and Suspicious Activity Report filing in most jurisdictions.
- Defining body
- Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
- Includes
- Exchanges, custodial wallet providers, transfer services
- Obligations
- KYC, transaction monitoring, Suspicious Activity Report filing
- Investigative relevance
- Subpoena target for identifying wallet owners behind traced funds
Common questions
Why does the VASP classification matter to a blockchain investigator?+
A VASP is legally required to collect and, on lawful request, disclose customer identity information tied to specific wallet addresses, which is what lets an investigator convert a traced blockchain address into a named suspect. A wallet held outside any VASP, such as a private self-custody wallet, has no equivalent record to subpoena.
Do all VASPs apply the same KYC standard worldwide?+
No, FATF sets recommendations that member jurisdictions implement into domestic law with varying strictness and enforcement, so KYC depth and record-retention periods differ between a VASP regulated in the US or EU and one operating from a jurisdiction with weaker enforcement. Investigators account for this when assessing how reliable or complete a given VASP's records will be.
Related terms
- Address Clustering
- A technique that groups blockchain addresses likely controlled by the same entity. The most common method uses the common-input-ownership heuristic: all input...
- Blockchain Explorer
- A web interface or API that indexes a blockchain and allows queries by address, transaction hash, or block. Examples: Blockstream.info for Bitcoin,...
- KYC (Know Your Customer)
- The identity verification process that regulated exchanges and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) are legally required to perform before allowing users to...
- Mixer / Tumbler
- A service that pools cryptocurrency from multiple users, exchanges it, and returns equivalent amounts to different addresses, intentionally breaking the transaction graph....
- UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output)
- The fundamental accounting unit of the Bitcoin protocol. Each transaction consumes previous UTXOs as inputs and creates new UTXOs as outputs. The...