The Malta Financial Services Authority is currently reviewing requests to revise the regulatory treatment of NFTs within its Virtual Financial Assets framework.
Under the current regulatory framework, NFTs are included within the scope of the Virtual Financial Assets Act, which also includes virtual tokens, virtual financial assets, electronic money and all financial instruments built or dependent on distributed ledger technology.
MFSA is proposing to have NFTs removed from the Virtual Financial Assets framework since they’re unique and nonfungible and therefore incapable of being used as payments for goods and services or for investment purposes.
According to the MFSA, The inclusion of such assets within the scope of the VFA framework may run counter to the spirit of the Act, which sought to regulate investment-type services offered in relation to VFAs falling outside the scope of existing traditional financial service asset categories.
The governing authority is currently inviting feedback from stakeholders before officially implementing these new revisions into its framework.
