Status: Vietnam’s Law on the Digital Technology Industry, No. 71/2025/QH15, is a national act that is in force from January 1, 2026. This profile focuses on Chapter V, the digital-asset chapter, rather than the law’s wider provisions on digital technology, semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
The law gives Vietnam a statutory framework for digital assets by defining them as assets under the Civil Code that are represented as digital data and created, issued, stored, transferred or authenticated by digital technology in an electronic environment. It does not itself create a full licensing code for every crypto-asset activity. Instead, it sets baseline concepts and delegates detailed management rules to the Government.
Digital-asset definitions in Law No. 71/2025/QH15
Article 46 provides the core definition of a digital asset. The definition is broad enough to cover assets expressed through digital data, but it is anchored to Vietnam’s Civil Code concept of property. That approach is important for editorial treatment: the law recognizes a legal category, but the operational treatment of particular assets still depends on implementing rules and other Vietnamese civil, financial, cybersecurity and AML/CFT laws.
Article 47 divides digital assets by use purpose, technology and other criteria. It then identifies three categories:
- Virtual assets: digital assets in an electronic environment that may be used for exchange or investment purposes.
- Cryptographic assets: digital assets authenticated with cryptographic technology or digital technologies with similar functions during creation, issuance, storage or transfer.
- Other digital assets: residual categories to be further classified under Government rules.
The statute expressly excludes securities, digital forms of fiat money and other financial assets governed by civil and finance laws from both the virtual-asset and cryptographic-asset categories. That carve-out is central to the law’s regulatory perimeter because it avoids treating all digitized financial instruments as crypto-style digital assets.
Management scope and crypto-asset services
Article 48 sets the management agenda for digital assets. It covers creation, issuance, storage, transfer and establishment of ownership rights. It also covers the rights and obligations of parties involved in digital-asset activity, inspection and examination powers, and handling of legal violations.
The same article directs future management rules to address cybersecurity, AML/CFT controls, counter-terrorist financing and measures against proliferation financing. It also refers to business conditions for the provision of cryptographic-asset services. The result is a framework-style provision: it signals that service providers and market infrastructure will be regulated, but it leaves detailed permissions, licensing processes and supervisory allocation to Government regulations.
Relationship to Vietnam’s crypto-asset pilot market
After the law was adopted, the Government issued Resolution No. 05/2025/NQ-CP on a pilot market for cryptographic assets in Vietnam. Government reporting in January 2026 stated that the State Securities Commission had begun receiving applications for licenses to provide market-organization services for cryptographic assets under Ministry of Finance procedures. That pilot should be tracked as a related instrument rather than merged into Law No. 71 itself.
Status and implementation timeline
The official government record lists Law No. 71/2025/QH15 as issued on June 14, 2025, by the National Assembly, with a main effective date of January 1, 2026. Article 50 states that Articles 11, 28 and 29 took effect earlier, on July 1, 2025. Chapter V’s digital-asset provisions are not listed among those early-effective articles, so they are treated here as in force from January 1, 2026.
For CryptoSlate coverage, the key implementation watchpoint is the boundary between the statutory definitions in Chapter V and the separate Government-level instruments that set pilot market mechanics, licensing, service conditions and enforcement procedures. Readers should not treat this profile as legal or compliance advice.