Regulatory mapping is a controlled inventory of legal questions and operating facts—not a table that marks an entire country green or red.
Separate the layers of authority
Build four linked inventories
- Entity inventory: legal entities, foundations, associations, partnerships, service providers, and governance bodies.
- Service inventory: custody, exchange, transfer, routing, execution, platform, advice, issuance, administration, or other functions.
- Asset inventory: asset rights, issuer, redemption, transferability, classification, chain, wrapper, and supported use.
- Country inventory: establishment, people, users, active offering, language, marketing, partners, infrastructure, and payment connections.
Use a question matrix
| Question | Owner | Evidence | Decision output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which entity provides each service? | Legal + product | Terms, contracts, flows, operations | Entity/service map |
| What is the asset? | Legal + asset committee | Rights, code, issuer, market use | Classification and restrictions |
| Where is the service offered? | Legal + commercial | Users, marketing, language, partners | Country launch matrix |
| What authorization or registration applies? | Local counsel | Law, guidance, factual package | License path or launch condition |
| Which controls are required? | Compliance + security | Rule mapping, architecture, test results | Control requirements and evidence |
Important regional lenses
Global FATF-aligned VASP analysis
Use function, “for or on behalf of another,” people and entities, control or influence, and risk-based controls as a global baseline. Then identify the national implementation that is legally relevant.
United States
Prepare a fact-specific business-model package covering acceptance and transmission, administrators, exchangers, users, hosted and unhosted wallet features, decentralized applications, compensation, and separate federal and state workstreams. Read the U.S. virtual-currency function test.
European Union
Separate the MiCA crypto-asset service provider analysis from VASP terminology and AML/CFT obligations. Classify the asset, map every service, identify the entity, and account for related transfer-information and operational requirements. Read MiCA CASP vs. VASP.
Connect legal decisions to configuration
A country decision should specify the entity, product, services, assets, clients, limits, disclosures, required controls, assumptions, approval date, and change triggers. Product configuration should prevent unsupported combinations from being enabled through a marketing or engineering change.