Is crypto legal in Georgia? Rules & regulation (2026)

The Governor of the National Bank of Georgia signed Order No. 52/04 establishing rules for stablecoin issuance and Initial Coin Offerings by VASPs, requiring 100% reserve backing at all times. Partially modelled on MiCA (EU) and the US GENIUS Act, it positions Georgia as one of the first countries in the South Caucasus region with dedicated stablecoin regulation.

Amendments to the Organic Law on the National Bank of Georgia significantly expanded NBG authority to cover prudential oversight, consumer protection, cybersecurity, and operational risk management of VASPs — going beyond the initial AML-only scope of 2022. The NBG must issue all implementing subordinate acts by September 1, 2026.

MONEYVAL's 2024 Follow-Up Report re-rated Georgia on FATF Recommendation 15 (Virtual Assets) from 'Partially Compliant' to 'Largely Compliant', recognising the 2023 VASP registration and AML framework. Georgia became one of only seven out of 27 MONEYVAL member states to achieve this rating.

The National Bank of Georgia approved a regulation establishing how monetary fines are determined, imposed, and enforced against VASPs and their administrators, categorising violations into three tiers (less serious, serious, especially serious). This completed the enforcement toolkit of the 2023 VASP framework.

The National Bank of Georgia issued Decree N94/04, creating a mandatory registration regime for all Virtual Asset Service Providers offering exchange, transfer, or custodial services in Georgia. Requirements include Fit & Proper criteria for administrators, minimum capital, AML/CFT programmes, and operational controls — the centrepiece of Georgia's current VASP framework.

The Georgian Parliament amended the Law on Facilitating the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism to formally include VASPs in the list of obligated/accountable entities required to implement full KYC, customer due diligence, and transaction-monitoring programmes. This legislative step created the AML compliance obligation that the NBG's June 2023 registration rule operationalised.

MONEYVAL adopted Georgia's Fifth Round Mutual Evaluation Report, rating the country 'Partially Compliant' on FATF Recommendation 15 and identifying material gaps in VASP registration and supervision. The report became the primary external driver for the 2022–2023 legislative reform package.

Georgia's Minister of Finance issued Public Ruling N201, the first and only normative act to define crypto-assets and set out their tax treatment. It exempted individual investors from income tax on cryptocurrency profits, excluded crypto-to-fiat exchange from VAT, and treated the sale of computational power (mining) as an electronically supplied service — establishing Georgia's reputation as a tax-friendly crypto destination.

Following the 2016 MOU, Georgia's National Agency of Public Registry (NAPR) had logged more than 100,000 land-title records on the Bitcoin blockchain via Bitfury's platform, the first time any sovereign government had used a public blockchain to secure official state records at scale. The pilot validated blockchain's public-sector utility and raised Georgia's international profile as a tech-forward jurisdiction ahead of crypto regulation.

The Government of Georgia signed an MOU with Bitfury Group and economist Hernando de Soto to pilot Bitcoin blockchain-based land titling via the National Agency of Public Registry (NAPR). This was the first instance of a national government partnering with a blockchain firm to secure and validate official property records, establishing Georgia as an early state-level blockchain adopter years before crypto-specific legislation emerged.