The Philippines just drew a hard line against privacy coins. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s central bank, has approved a memorandum that flatly prohibits licensed virtual asset service providers from listing or supporting any anonymity-enhancing virtual assets.
Memorandum No. M-2026-023, approved on June 5, 2026, effectively makes the Philippines one of the latest jurisdictions to take a regulatory sledgehammer to privacy-focused tokens. Every registered VASP operating in the country, including major platforms like Coins.ph and PDAX, must now comply.
What the new rules actually require
The core prohibition is straightforward: if a token is designed to obscure transaction details, licensed Philippine exchanges can’t touch it. The BSP didn’t name specific tokens in the memorandum, but the category broadly encompasses coins built with anonymity-enhancing features that make transaction tracing difficult or impossible.
But the memo goes well beyond just banning privacy coins. It introduces a significantly more demanding pre-listing evaluation framework for all virtual assets.
