Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) has officially proposed that the country temporarily bans the importation of cryptocurrency mining equipment, according to the local news outlet named Vnexpress on Jun 5, 2018. Mining equipments are currently easily imported into Vietnam, over 6,300 cryptocurrency mining rigs were imported within the first 4 months of this year. This proposal follows the largest crypto fraud case in the country involved by more than 32,000 victims who were swindled out of 15 trln dong through sales of two ERC-20-standard tokens of Ifan and Pincoin scam.

Vietnam Ministry of Finance’s Proposal

In a recent Document 5964/BTC-TCQH, were submitted to the Prime Minister containing a comment that Ministries are dealing with cryptocurrency management in Vietnam and MoF proposes to ban the importation of mining equipment.

According to the MoF, “Mining machines are not on the list of goods banned from importation and are not subject to the list of specialized management or unsafe goods, so enterprises are easily allowed to complete the import procedures. The use of cryptocurrency ad e-devices in this country brings regulators hard management. Then, it might be easy to use cryptocurrency as currency or other payment methods. This is in violation of the revised Government Decree 101 on non-cash payments”

The published data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs shows that “from 2017 to Apr 2018, the country imported about 15,600 mining machines,” adding that “most of them were imported into 3 biggest cities: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang. Last year, more than 9,300 rigs were imported into Vietnam”.

Cryptocurrency Mining Equipment Imports were banned

The MoF also mentioned that the Modern Tech Corp in Ho Chi Minh City was “accused of over VND 15 trillion (~US$656 million) of fraud by more than 32,000 people through its Ifan and Pincoin investment models.” Regarding to the MoF, “state management agencies need to take strict control measures with the import and use of this commodity” to protect Vietnamese people from similar scams in the future. As one of measures to control possible scams in the near future, the MoF proposed to apply the import suspension for cryptocurrency mining equipment.

In mid-April 2018, Prime Minister Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc urged the Vietnamese government and financial bodies to tighten the “management of activities related to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,” warned that the crypto investment is “developing in a more complicated manner.”