Mining-Related Services That Require a PVARA Licence

The Virtual Assets Act, 2026 exempts pure mining from licensing, but it also creates a named, licensable service category for mining activity that crosses a specific line. Schedule I item 10 — “Mining-related Virtual Asset Services” — and section 37(2) together define where that line sits. This article works through the statutory text of both provisions and what a mining-services business needs to do to fall on the correct side of it.

What is “Mining-related Virtual Asset Services” under Schedule I?

Schedule I, item 10 of the Act names Mining-related Virtual Asset Services as one of the ten categories of Virtual Asset Services listed under section 18. It covers activities where mining operations provide services to third parties involving customer virtual assets or funds, while excluding pure mining conducted for the operator’s own account.

Schedule I, item 10 states:

Includes activities where mining operations provide services to third parties involving customer virtual assets or funds. Pure mining for own account is excluded. Licensing and regulatory obligations apply only

The published text of item 10 ends mid-sentence in the version of the Act reviewed for this article. What follows “apply only” is not available in the source document, so this article does not speculate about the missing clause. What is clear from the text that does exist is the core distinction the item draws: a mining operation providing services to third parties, where customer virtual assets or funds are involved, is a licensable Virtual Asset Service; a mining operation conducted purely for the operator’s own account is not.

How does Schedule I item 10 relate to section 37(2)?

Section 37(2), in the Act’s main mining provision, states the same rule in fuller sentences. It says pure mining, by itself, does not constitute a Virtual Asset Service requiring a licence under section 18 and Schedule I, but that mining operations involving customer assets or funds shall be treated as Virtual Asset Services and require licensing.

Section 37(2) states:

Pure mining, by itself, does not constitute a Virtual Asset Service requiring license under section 18 and Schedule I. Mining operations involving customer assets or funds, however, shall be treated as Virtual Asset Services and require licensing.

Schedule I item 10 and section 37(2) are two statements of one rule, not two separate rules. Section 37(2) sets the boundary in the body of the Act; Schedule I item 10 gives that boundary its formal service-category name and description for licensing purposes under section 18. Read together, they leave no gap: an activity is either pure mining (unlicensed) or a mining-related service touching customer assets or funds (licensed), with the presence of customer assets or funds as the single deciding fact.

What kinds of mining businesses fall inside the licensable category?

The Act does not give a further list of examples beyond “activities where mining operations provide services to third parties involving customer virtual assets or funds.” Reading that phrase against the Act’s own definition of Customer Assets under section 3(1)(vii) — virtual assets and fiat currency belonging to a customer that a provider holds, safeguards, or otherwise has custody or control over — gives a working, though not exhaustive, picture of what is likely to fall inside the category:

• cloud mining or hosted mining services, where a business sells mining capacity to customers and manages the resulting rewards or contracts on their behalf
• mining pools that hold or distribute rewards attributable to individual participating customers, rather than each participant mining and receiving rewards independently on their own infrastructure
• any arrangement where a mining business takes custody of, or exercises control over, virtual assets or fiat funds that belong to a third-party customer in connection with the mining activity

None of these examples are named in the Act itself; they are our reading of how the statutory test — “provide services to third parties involving customer virtual assets or funds” — is likely to apply to common mining business models. An operator with a model that does not cleanly fit an existing example should not assume it falls outside the licensable category without direct confirmation from PVARA.

Business model	Pure mining (unlicensed)	Mining-related service (licensed)
Own-account mining rig, rewards kept by the operator	Yes	No
Selling hosted mining capacity, rewards attributed to paying customers	No	Yes
Mining pool holding or distributing rewards on behalf of participants	Depends on custody arrangement	Likely, where customer assets are held or controlled

Which licence category does a mining-related service fall under?

The Act names Mining-related Virtual Asset Services as its own category in Schedule I, separate from the nine other service categories — Advisory, Broker-Dealer, Custody and Administration, Exchange, Lending and Borrowing, Derivatives, Management and Investment, Transfer and Settlement, and Issuance Services. A business offering a mining-related service applies for a licence permitted to undertake that specific service category, in the same way as any other Virtual Asset Service Provider under section 21(3), which specifies that a licence names the particular services a Licensee is permitted to carry on.

Where a mining-related service also involves holding customer assets in a way that overlaps with custody functions, an operator should expect PVARA to assess whether custody obligations under sections 24 to 29 of the Act — segregation of customer assets, minimum financial resources, and custody standards — apply in addition to the mining-specific licence, since those chapters apply generally wherever customer assets are held, not only to businesses licensed under the custody category by name.

What obligations follow once a mining-related service is licensed?

Once licensed, a Mining-related Virtual Asset Service is a Licensee under the Act like any other, and the ongoing obligations of section 22 apply in full: maintaining prescribed minimum paid-up capital and financial resources, complying with all Regulations and directives, submitting periodic returns and audited financial statements, obtaining prior approval for material changes in control or business, maintaining risk-management, compliance and cybersecurity systems, and paying supervision and renewal fees. The Act does not create a lighter-touch regime for mining-related services once they cross into licensable territory — the exemption in section 37(2) is binary, not scaled.

What should a mining-services business do to determine its licensing position?

• document precisely whether the business ever holds, safeguards, or controls virtual assets or fiat funds belonging to a customer in connection with its mining activity, since that fact alone decides licensing status
• do not rely on marketing language such as “hosting” or “hashpower rental” to determine the answer — assess the underlying custody and control relationship against the Act’s own Customer Assets definition
• where a business model is genuinely ambiguous — for example, a mining pool structure that does not clearly hold customer funds — seek direct confirmation from PVARA rather than assuming the pure-mining exemption applies
• prepare for the full section 22 ongoing-obligations regime once a mining-related service licence is contemplated, not a reduced version of it
• watch for the missing text at the end of Schedule I item 10 to be clarified in a future consolidated or corrected publication of the Act, since the clause “Licensing and regulatory obligations apply only” is incomplete in the version reviewed here

The rule at the centre of both section 37(2) and Schedule I item 10 is simple to state and consequential to apply: touch a customer’s assets or funds through a mining business, and the Act treats that business as a Virtual Asset Service requiring a full licence application, regardless of how the business describes itself.

About this analysis

This analysis was prepared by the CoinConnect research desk from the Virtual Assets Act, 2026, read as published. Where practice is not yet settled or guidance has not been issued, that is stated in the text above.

Regulatory positions change and specific requirements should be verified against the current position published by the relevant authority before you act on them. This is information and analysis, not legal advice, and it does not create an advisory relationship. Take professional advice on your own circumstances.