Methodology

This map tracks cryptocurrency regulation across jurisdictions along 9 dimensions. Every value is sourced from a primary government, central bank, financial regulator, or tax authority — never from an aggregator. Where a value is shown, you can click the jurisdiction to see the issuing body, a link to the official source, the as-of date, and (where available) a verbatim quote from that source.

The 9 dimensions

• CBDC status — Stage of the central bank digital currency programme — research, pilot, or launched.
• Legal status — Whether crypto is legal, restricted, or banned for individuals and businesses.
• VASP licensing — Whether the jurisdiction licenses crypto/VASP service providers.
• Stablecoin rules — Rules governing stablecoin and e-money-token issuance.
• Tax treatment — How crypto gains are taxed and reported, including OECD CARF participation.
• DeFi treatment — How decentralized finance (DeFi) is treated by regulators.
• NFT classification — Whether NFTs are addressed in regulation.
• Mining policy — Policy toward crypto mining — permitted, restricted, or banned.
• Enforcement intensity — Intensity of regulatory enforcement actions against crypto firms.

Primary sources only

The governing rule is simple: we cite the source, not a summary of it. If research surfaces a Wikipedia article, a news report, or a law-firm briefing, we use it only to find the underlying official document — the statute, regulator circular, central-bank notice, or tax-authority guidance — and then cite that primary document directly. Sources behind the data on this map include the U.S. SEC, CFTC and IRS; the EU's MiCA regime as implemented by national regulators (BaFin, AMF, CONSOB, CNMV, AFM, the Central Bank of Ireland, KNF); the UK FCA and HMRC; Singapore's MAS; Hong Kong's SFC; Japan's FSA; Korea's FSC; and the central banks and tax authorities of each jurisdiction — among them the Banco Central do Brasil, the Bank of Russia, and the People's Bank of China.

Provenance on every value

Each value is stored as a provenance-locked cell carrying its source name and URL, the publishing body, an as-of date, a confidence rating, and the method by which it was recorded. CBDC programme status is the one automated direct feed (from cbdctracker.org); the categorical regulatory dimensions are hand-verified against the primary documents cited.

No fabricated data — ever

We never use AI to generate, estimate, or "fill in" regulatory data. A jurisdiction shown in neutral grey for a given dimension means we have not yet recorded a primary source for it — not that the answer is zero. An honest gap is preferred to a confident guess. Coverage expands as more primary sources are verified.

Refresh cadence

Data is refreshed on the 1st of each month at 03:00 UTC by an automated pipeline that reassembles the records into vector tiles using tippecanoe and redeploys. A manual refresh can be triggered via the ingest-cron.yml GitHub Actions workflow (workflow_dispatch).