During the course of the year, the Cayman Islands made significant advances towards becoming a global centre for Web3 businesses.
For years, government officials and tech entrepreneurs have talked about Cayman’s potential to become a centre for Web3 ventures, but 2025 was the year when those plans became reality.
Web3 is the term applied to a next generation of technology ventures that shape how people interact online. Unlike Web2 companies – for example Facebook (Meta) – that store data and control services through central servers – Web3 operates on distributed networks based on blockchain technology or other decentralised systems.
Regulation
A large part of Cayman’s appeal to international Web3 companies – that could choose to be based anywhere – is that the jurisdiction has been quick to create a regulatory framework for the emerging sector.
The bedrock is the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, which was passed in 2020 to meet requirements from international anti-money laundering body, the Financial Action Task Force. Commonly known as the VASP Act, it was amended in 2024 and that amendment came into force in April 2025.
This year also saw the first enforcement of the VASP Act, with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority cancelling the licence of a virtual asset service provider.
Another key regulatory change came later in the year, on 27 Nov., when Cayman announced that the jurisdiction would be one of the first to comply with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) new cryptocurrency tax reporting regulations.
Two new international crypto tax reporting frameworks – the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and amendments to the Common Reporting Standard – will be implemented in Cayman in 2026.
The new regulations will extend OECD tax reporting rules that already exist for traditional financial assets to digital money, including cryptocurrencies.
Tech companies come to Cayman
Regulations are important, but they mean nothing if there are no companies to regulate. The other reason 2025 was a breakthrough year is the advances made by Web3 companies in Cayman.
In August, Bullish, the digital asset institutional platform and owner of media outlet CoinDesk, listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Cayman-headquartered company priced its initial public offering at US$37 a share, coming in above expectations. By the close of the day, that price had already reached US$90 a share, giving the company a market value of more than US$13 billion.
Bullish stands out because it has a physical presence in Cayman, with employees and office space, which creates direct and indirect economic benefits for the jurisdiction. Initiatives like TechCayman and Cayman Enterprise City encourage international tech companies to establish a physical presence in the Islands.
But Cayman has also seen a huge growth in Web3 companies registered on the Islands. In December, Compass reported on the dramatic increase in foundation company registrations. According to the Cayman Islands General Registry, there were more than 1,700 foundations registered in Cayman at the end of October, up from 790 at the end of 2023.
Legal experts estimated that the majority of those foundations would be for Web3 ventures. According to Cayman Finance, the combined total assets of Web3 foundation companies registered in the jurisdiction come to more than US$10 billion.
That’s a tiny proportion of the roughly US$8.5 trillion in assets held across Cayman’s financial system. But with Web3 ventures expected to grow fast, it’s a way for Cayman to future-proof its status as a leading financial centre.
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