Digital trust in finance: CAEX outlines views on building a crypto-asset exchange

In the context of Vietnam beginning to open a path for the crypto asset market through a pilot legal framework under Resolution 05/2025/NQ-CP, the market’s interest is not only which enterprises will participate, but also how those enterprises build the platform, manage risk, and protect users. The Vietnam Crypto Asset Exchange Ltd. (CAEX) — a member of the VPBank financial ecosystem — shares how the company is preparing its infrastructure, teams, and operating model to participate in Vietnam’s crypto asset market. CAEX reportedly received preliminary approval from the Ministry of Finance and completed a capital increase to 10,000 billion VND in April. Beyond meeting procedural and financial capacity requirements, the company has also prepared substantial backend trading platforms and operations systems. At the Digital Trust in Finance event organized by the Digital Trust Alliance on May 12, CAEX representative Chris Chiew will deliver a deeper talk on how to protect users when participating in the crypto asset market. With the crypto asset market, many decisions on technology, custody, and operations in the early stage can directly influence how the market develops later. In its early phase, CAEX is developing the platform with a “regulated by design” approach — placing compliance and governance at the center of product design. This contrasts with other markets’ common practices: starting by purchasing or implementing an existing exchange and then gradually adding compliance layers behind the scenes. For CAEX, the business does not redesign everything but makes compliance requirements an integral part of the product architecture from the outset. This approach draws on experience building the digital finance ecosystem from units like VPBankS and LynkiD — in building and operating large-scale technology systems in the securities and electronic trading space for millions of customers. That experience helps CAEX view crypto asset products not just as a trading channel, but as a financial infrastructure requiring stability, controls, and long‑term scalability. Under this direction, requirements such as customer identification, anti-money laundering, transaction monitoring, customer asset management, asset segregation, settlement in Vietnamese dong, and reporting processes are not seen as peripheral layers. They are part of the platform’s design. While this can require more resources in the initial build, it helps reduce the risk of structural adjustments as user bases and regulatory expectations grow. In April, CAEX announced a capital increase and that OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital became strategic shareholders. International partners in the digital assets space are viewed by CAEX as part of enhancing market experience, technology, and governance, rather than merely a capital story. One major barrier to organizing crypto asset trading is the gap between technology and user experience. Although interest in crypto assets has surged in recent years, most ordinary users are not familiar with concepts like custody wallets, private keys, slippage, or match-logic mechanisms. The challenge for CAEX is to make the product usable for ordinary users while maintaining the stringent controls of a regulated platform. With crypto assets, a good user experience is not only about a nice interface or fast actions; it also means users understand what they are doing, recognize risks before decisions, and feel protected in critical steps. Therefore, CAEX emphasizes optimizing the user journey from account opening, identity verification, deposits/withdrawals, asset viewing, order placement, and transaction monitoring to access to support when needed. The goal is to minimize friction points without removing the necessary controls that ensure compliance and safety. CAEX may also prepare training options and a test environment for users to become familiar before official trading begins. Tools such as a demo account, sandbox, step-by-step guides, short lessons, contextual risk warnings, operation simulations, and explanations on custody, fees, and price volatility can help reduce errors and enhance investors’ self-protection. From this perspective, educating users is not a marketing add-on; it is a component of investor protection. A sustainable digital asset market should not only encourage more trading but help users understand products, risks, and their rights more clearly. Beyond trading products, CAEX aims to contribute to the development of the Vietnamese crypto market’s infrastructure. Customer identification, data management for governance, integration with banks and securities companies, e-wallets, and issuers are layers that can help the market operate in a standardized and transparent manner. This approach differs from building a single trading venue for a company’s own users. If infrastructure standards are well built, they can support and connect multiple participants: crypto issuers, custodians, financial institutions, distribution entities, and technology providers. In particular with tokenized real-world assets (RWA), the market needs more than a trading venue. CAEX aligns with Resolution 05 to build and refine processes for issuance, information disclosure, pricing, custody, distribution, trading, supervision, and post-issuance risk management. This path requires collaboration among blockchain technology, traditional finance, legal, and operations disciplines, and consistent regulatory understanding and practice—hence CAEX’s choice to build a solid foundation early instead of focusing on a single simple exchange. In the long run, once these foundational layers are clearly formed, CAEX and other crypto asset exchanges can serve as a bridge between the traditional financial ecosystem and a regulated Vietnamese crypto asset market. This is not a goal achievable by a single product; it requires organizational, technological, and operational capabilities accumulated over time. Further reading Says Market Times article: Digital Trust in Finance: CAEX shares views on building a crypto asset exchange (link).