NEW ZEALAND Law and Practice Contributed by: James Cochrane, Andrew Comer, Carlo Wan and Graeme Crombie, Lane Neave
(b) fragmentation increases consumer and sys- temic risk; (c) New Zealand risks falling behind comparable jurisdictions; and (d) industry broadly supports technology-neutral but clearer rules. • Stablecoins and payments – Stablecoins have emerged as a practical payments and remittance use case. The FMA’s Financial Markets Conduct (ECDD Holdings Limited Stablecoin) Designation Notice 2026 (the “NZDD designation”) demon- strates how payment-focused stablecoins may be assessed under existing law. The NZDD designa- tion declared that the NZDD stablecoin is not a financial product for the purposes of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (FMC Act). This was on the basis that the NZDD stablecoin is not an investment, pays no income or interest to holders, and is used practically as a means of payment or remittance. • Regulated investment exposure – Crypto-asset exposure is increasingly provided through con- ventional investment structures, such as managed funds and Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), reduc- ing reliance on direct self-custody. For example, Raise Investments Limited’s Bitcoin ETF PIE Fund reports net fund assets of NZD26 million as of 31 March 2026, a significant increase from the NZD14.6 million under management in March 2024. • Public sector exploration – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) continues policy and design work on a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) and monitors privately issued New Zealand dollar-backed stablecoins. Key Issues Impacting the NZ Blockchain Market in • CARF implementation, increasing tax reporting, compliance obligations and costs for crypto-asset service providers; • international regulatory pressure, driven by guid- ance from bodies such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and the IMF, promoting the Next 12 Months Key issues include:
licensing, AML/CFT compliance, consumer protec- tion, custody standards and effective supervision; • regulatory developments offshore, including new or pending digital asset regimes in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and many other countries (including nota- bly in Asia, the Middle East and offshore finance centres), have passed regimes designed to both protect their consumers and attract innovative businesses to set up locally; • whether New Zealand should introduce digital asset-specific regulation, including classification of digital assets, licensing of exchanges and custodi- ans, and regulation of digital asset-related advice; and • post-FTX (Futures Exchange) resilience measures, including increased oversight and application of Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) Standards, particularly in relation to cyber-resilience and inci- dent reporting. Interaction With Intellectual Property Law Blockchain businesses have generally operated within New Zealand’s existing intellectual property frame- work without fundamental difficulty. Copyright, trade mark, passing off and Fair Trading Act principles apply to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and tokenised content in the usual way. Ownership of an NFT does not, without express agreement, transfer copyright in the underlying work. Practical challenges arise where infringing content is minted or traded on immutable or decentralised plat- forms, as removal or modification may be difficult or impossible. Although New Zealand courts have not yet considered NFT-specific IP disputes, overseas decisions indicate that ordinary IP principles apply. Developers are therefore expected to address owner- ship, licensing, enforcement mechanisms and the use of Māori cultural material clearly at the design and launch stage. 1.1.2 Regulatory Sandbox In December 2024, the FMA announced a pilot regula- tory sandbox for 2025, designed to allow firms to test innovative products, services and business models under regulatory supervision. The FMA welcomed the first group of participants in April 2025, and the pilot
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