VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider)
Also called Virtual Asset Service Provider, VASPs, CASP
A Virtual Asset Service Provider is the Financial Action Task Force's formal category for any business that, as a business, does one or more of the following with virtual assets (crypto): exchanges them for fiat currency, exchanges one virtual asset for another, transfers them on a customer's behalf, provides safekeeping or administration (custody) of them, or participates in the financial services around an issuer's offer or sale of a virtual asset. If a business does any of those things commercially, FATF's framework treats it the same way traditional AML law treats a bank or money-services business, subject to registration or licensing, customer due diligence obligations, and the Travel Rule's information-sharing requirements.
The category exists because crypto exchanges and custodians perform functions economically equivalent to what banks and money transmitters have always done, and regulators concluded the same anti-money-laundering logic that applies to a bank wire should apply to a crypto transfer moving through a comparable service provider.
Who actually built this
The Financial Action Task Force introduced the VASP definition in its June 2019 guidance, as part of extending its 40 Recommendations to cover virtual assets explicitly. It's a global standard, not a national law by itself, individual countries then require VASPs operating in their jurisdiction to register or obtain a license under their own rules. The European Union's MiCA regulation later formalized its own, EU-specific version of this category under the name Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP), see MiCA, which is largely the same underlying concept, licensed and enforced specifically under EU law.
Solidus today
Solidus does not meet this definition under any jurisdiction's rules: it runs no crypto exchange, no custody service, and no transfer service for virtual assets, and there is no Solidus token trading on any market. The network is a public testnet with no mainnet token. Nothing here should be read as Solidus holding or seeking VASP/CASP status; neither is accurate today.
See also
FATF Travel Rule is the specific obligation VASPs carry. IVMS101 is the data format they use to meet it. MiCA is the EU's formalized licensing regime for the same category of business.
Where it comes from
Someone else specified this. Solidus assembles it.
Defined by the Financial Action Task Force in its June 2019 update to the FATF Recommendations, which added "virtual asset" and "virtual asset service provider" as formal terms covering crypto exchanges, custodians, and transfer services. The European Union's MiCA regulation later introduced its own, largely overlapping category, Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP), as the EU-specific licensing term for the same underlying activity. Neither definition is a Solidus creation.
How to check this
Solidus has not built this. The entry explains the concept.
None to point to. This is a statement of what Solidus is not, not a capability being demonstrated. Unlike the EU's QTSP Trusted List, there is no single global VASP registry a reader could check Solidus's absence against; national VASP/CASP registers exist per-jurisdiction, and Solidus does not appear on any of them because it has not applied to any.