Golden Visas Are Drying Up — And Crypto Investors Are Feeling It

[nihalsari]

If you were planning to stack passports like NFTs, here’s your heads-up: Golden Visa programs — the go-to residency path for the ultra-wealthy (including crypto whales) — are getting chopped left and right.

Golden visas once offered a fairly simple play: invest six or seven figures, secure residency or citizenship, and enjoy the tax/regulatory perks of your new crypto-friendly homeland.

But now? That loophole is closing fast.
Governments Are Cracking Down

In just the past few years, nine countries — including the UK, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Malta — have scrapped or severely tightened their golden visa schemes.

In Spain, the program got nuked this April over housing crisis concerns.
In Malta, the EU literally ruled their golden passport program illegal.
Even Portugal, the darling of crypto expats, is making its program stricter.

Why? A mix of:

💸 Fears of money laundering (hi, crypto skeptics)

🏠 Rising local housing costs from wealthy foreign buyers

⚖️ Post-Ukraine war security politics

🔍 EU pressure to curb “citizenship for sale” programs

But Why Do Crypto People Love Golden Visas?

Simple: flexibility, tax strategy, and freedom to exit stage left if regulators get weird.

Most golden visa programs ask for only a few days/year of residency
Many don’t require renouncing your original passport
Some even accept crypto investments directly

Check these out:

🇵🇹 Portugal’s Bitcoin Eco Golden Visa – exposure to BTC + residency

🇮🇹 Bitizenship’s Italian Startup Visa – invest €250K in a local Bitcoin startup

🇸🇻 El Salvador – drop $1M in BTC or USDT, get citizenship

🇦🇪 TON Foundation’s UAE visa scheme – (oops, announced prematurely, not official… yet)

The Trend: Scarcity & Speed

“What’s possible today may become legally impossible within months — or weeks.”
— Alessandro Palombo, Bitizenship

TL;DR: If you’re eyeing a golden visa with crypto, don’t sleep on it.

Even programs that are still open are becoming more selective, slower, or adding extra hoops (background checks, stricter KYC, minimum holding periods).

And yes, it’s very “DYOR,” because premature launches (like the UAE-TON drama) are adding confusion to an already shifting landscape.
So What Now?

Are golden visas worth chasing anymore for crypto investors?
Should countries embrace them or ditch them?

Would you drop $250K+ for a second passport tied to BTC exposure?
Should more countries offer crypto-backed golden visa schemes?
Or is this just a regulatory time bomb waiting to explode?

Sound off below Let’s debate it.

[jacson4]

The golden visa era is clearly winding down—and crypto investors are one of the hardest-hit groups. Governments around the world—particularly in the EU—are dismantling popular investor immigration schemes. For instance, Spain officially ended its traditional golden visa program on April 3, 2025, amid concerns over housing affordability and social equity. Earlier, Malta’s citizenship‑by‑investment program was ruled illegal, while programs in Cyprus, Bulgaria, Ireland, and others were sunset between 2021 and 2023 .

[Nahid10]

Crypto investors trying to secure second passports or residency face shrinking options—but alternatives still exist for now. While major EU programs have closed, select countries like El Salvador (Bitcoin/USDT investment for residency/citizenship) and Kazakhstan (crypto‑friendly long‑term residency) remain open—though some require fiat conversion before investment .

[jacson4]

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