Vanuatu’s stablecoin commissioner has been named, but the appointment has drawn scrutiny because the man taking the role appears to have spent fewer than six months in his most recent compliance position before stepping into one of the Pacific’s most unusual new regulatory posts.
Who Is Vanuatu’s Stablecoin Commissioner?
Jackson Miake’s LinkedIn profile lists him as Commissioner of Stablecoins at Vanuatu’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, starting in July 2026 on a contract basis.
His most recent private-sector role was Governance Risk and Compliance Specialist at Exness, the forex and CFD broker, where he worked from January to July 2026, a span of roughly six months.
Before that, from July to December 2025, he completed an internship as Team Leader in a Security Operations Centre at the SOC Australian Cyber Security Aide Centre. Earlier in his career he served as ICT Policy Manager at Vanuatu’s Department of Communications and Digital Transformation from August 2012 to September 2018, a role focused on policy for the ICT and telecommunications sectors.
Miake holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Massey University. An April 2025 event biography described him as a Western Sydney University student studying cybersecurity and human behaviour.
What the Stablecoins Act Requires
Vanuatu’s Parliament passed the Stablecoins Bill in 2025. According to the Bill for the Stablecoins Act No. of 2025, the legislation was modelled in part on Hong Kong’s stablecoin framework, following recommendations from international financial practitioners and national policy reviews. The bill describes stablecoins as digital tokens whose value is pegged to a reference asset, such as a fiat currency or commodity, to reduce volatility, and cites their growing use in payments and remittances as a primary driver for the legislation.
The Act establishes a Stablecoin Supervisory Commission (SSC), which handles licensing for issuers, reserve requirements, disclosure obligations and regulatory oversight. The Commissioner’s role sits within this structure, providing secretariat support: convening SSC meetings, preparing agendas and minutes, coordinating decisions and putting together annual strategic plans.
The legislation is explicit about eligibility. The SSC must appoint the Commissioner for a five-year term, with one possible reappointment, through a ‘fair and transparent selection process’ based on merit. Critically, a candidate cannot be appointed without at least five years of experience in a senior management role relevant to the Commissioner’s functions.
Miake’s publicly available career history does not obviously satisfy that requirement on its face. His ICT Policy Manager role at the Department of Communications and Digital Transformation ran for roughly six years, from 2012 to 2018, and could be the experience the SSC relied upon. But no public statement from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC), or the SSC has explained how the statutory eligibility criteria were assessed.
Vanuatu’s Broader Crypto Regulatory Framework
The SSC and the VFSC are separate bodies. The VFSC Commissioner holds a set of distinct statutory roles, including Registrar of Companies, Registrar of Credit Unions and Controller of Stamp Duties, none of which overlap with the SSC structure created by the Stablecoins Bill.
Vanuatu’s crypto regulation has been built incrementally. The jurisdiction passed the Financial Dealers Licensing (Amendment) Act No. 9 of 2021, which formally defined ‘digital assets’ in law, an earlier step that predated the 2025 Stablecoins Bill. Following that earlier legislation, according to Crypto for Innovation, the VFSC was given powers to enforce Financial Action Task Force (FATF) anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing and travel rule standards on digital asset firms, and became the licensing authority for virtual asset service providers in the jurisdiction.
The 2025 Stablecoins Bill goes further, creating a dedicated supervisory body for stablecoin issuers specifically, and positions Vanuatu, in the bill’s own explanatory note, as a South Pacific offshore financial hub seeking to attract compliant digital asset activity.
Whether the SSC’s selection process for Vanuatu’s stablecoin commissioner met the legislation’s own merit-based transparency standard is the question that remains publicly unanswered. The five-year eligibility clock, and who counted the years, is the detail to watch as the SSC begins formal operations.
