Bermuda Premier David Burt is making a bold bet: turning this British Overseas Territory into the world’s first fully onchain national economy. Since laying out the vision at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, his government has started moving from talk to action.
The biggest step so far came on 12 May at the Bermuda Digital Finance Forum, with the announcement of a major partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation to bring government payments, merchant transactions and key financial services onto the Stellar blockchain. Stellar is open source and designed specifically for fast, low-cost cross-border payments and stablecoin transfers, making it well-suited for real-world use cases like government payroll and everyday merchant transactions.
In Hamilton, the humid subtropical air wraps around you like a warm blanket. Duck inside any building – whether a government office, hotel lobby or the conference halls hosting the forum – and you’re hit by the shock of freezing AC. During the forum, a community event was delayed by high winds and sudden downpours. It feels oddly symbolic: Bermuda trying to navigate between the familiar comforts of tradition and the unpredictable currents of technological change, in a world with fewer physical wallets and coins.
This is a place of delightful peculiarities. Cars drive on the left. The Bermuda dollar is pegged one-to-one with the US dollar. British high-street names like Sainsbury’s sit alongside pastel-coloured colonial architecture, bright pink telephone boxes and a laid-back attitude that belies the island’s status as a sophisticated financial centre. The pro-independence Burt might have made it a sovereign country had he had the chance, though not in front of King Charles III, who visited the islands the week before the conference. Traffic is refreshingly light, and noisy tree frogs sing loudly through the night. And then there is the unmistakable men's local business attire: crisp blazers, knee-length socks, polished dress shoes and the iconic Bermuda shorts – a perfect blend of formality and island ease.
International business – led by reinsurance – makes up roughly 29% of GDP and over $2.1bn in annual output. Tourism adds another 4.5% of GDP and around $410mn in direct value. Think pink-sand beaches, turquoise water filled with cruise ships, and yachts decked out with Bermudians enjoying a swizzle (the local cocktail made with two types of rum, fruit juice and bitters). And, a few days before the forum, Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds clocking more than 80 km/h with the SailGP team he co-owns in the sailing equivalent of Formula 1. Beneath the relaxed surface sits a serious, well-regulated financial centre that fiercely protects its reputation.
The foundation was laid in 2018 with the Digital Asset Business Act (DABA). Overseen by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), it was one of the world’s first comprehensive rulebooks for digital assets. The BMA, Bermuda’s sole financial regulator, adopts a principles-based approach and strict yet innovation-friendly oversight. It supervises the island’s entire financial sector – including a massive insurance and reinsurance industry with trillions in assets under management – as well as banks, investment funds, and now digital asset businesses. Under DABA, the BMA issues three tiers of licences covering token issuance, exchanges, custody, payment services and more. More than 40 digital asset firms are now licensed or operating in sandbox mode, in which they have two years to thoroughly test their projects and prepare for full-scale, live deployment.
"We've been working with proper companies that are properly capitalized and whose customers are properly protected," said Leonie Tear, a partner at the Bermuda office of Walkers, a law firm present in 10 offshore jurisdictions including Hong Kong, Dubai and the Cayman Islands. "Our clients pick Bermuda for a long-term competitive advantage from being licensed by a sophisticated regulator that enables innovation."
Premier drives national vision
Premier Burt is no latecomer to crypto. Speaking to Sandmark at the forum in Bermuda, he described himself as a "tech guy at heart." As a kid with no athletic talent - his words - he got into coding through flight simulators, competed in programming contests and later earned degrees in finance and information systems. He even co-founded Hitch, the popular local taxi app. He personally owns Bitcoin (BTC), bought in March 2020 as the world reeled from the COVID-19 outbreak. Whether he still sees the original cryptocurrency as a financial lifeboat was not discussed.
Burt is giving up his positions as premier and finance minister in October, but he has no intention of stepping back from the digital finance push. "I’m going to be a continued cheerleader and supporter for digital finance [in] Bermuda, continuing to press the government and work with industry to continue to promote and continuing to travel to share the story," he said. "Because I have a firm belief that digital finance is going to empower the next generation of citizens." The goal was never to serve only the tiny domestic market of 65,000 people but to attract major international players who could test, refine and scale solutions before going global, he said.
The early days were tentative. In March 2019, Omega One (with its institutional dark pool Omega Dark) became the first platform to receive a provisional digital asset exchange licence from the BMA after more than a year of intense scrutiny – the first company to cross the regulator’s high compliance bar. Later that July, Circle achieved another milestone as the first major global fintech firm to secure a full Class F licence. A high-profile 2018 memorandum of understanding with Binance generated significant excitement and a $15mn investment pledge, but the project never advanced to a licence application.
A sobering moment on the journey was the 2022 liquidiation of BlockFi, a distressed crypto platform with around 100,000 clients.
These early pioneers and near-misses reflected the BMA’s demanding standards. Coinbase followed in 2022–2023 with its own full licence, with ambitions for an offshore exchange that would develop crypto derivatives, while Kraken has since engaged in education and wallet initiatives. These high-profile arrivals marked the shift from regulatory groundwork and experiments to real institutional presence.
Burt’s pitch is clear. Traditional card fees of 3–8% eat into merchant profits and slow things down in a small, open economy. Many taxis only take cash, and Apple Pay is yet to arrive on the island. "The lack of mobile money applications and reliance on legacy payments infrastructure has left Bermudians paying high payment processing fees and hindered additional economic growth opportunities," he said at the forum. Onchain systems using stablecoins like USDC, Burt argues, can cut those costs dramatically and keep more money on the island. But how?
For the public, so far, it's all a visionary overlay, with early-stage pilots and partnerships rather than island-wide transformation. The Stellar announcement marks the first operational milestone, but concrete delivery remains in its infancy.
Who benefits – and how long will it take?
On a tight-knit island where everyone seems to know everyone, the real question is simple: does this little Atlantic territory actually need blockchain, want it, or even understand what it means?
The answers on the streets of Hamilton are as colourful and divided as Bermuda itself. Younger voices tend to be the most enthusiastic. A 17-year-old student named Jo put it bluntly: "’Bout time. This island is full of old people and old ideas. We need jobs and stuff to get us competing with the US." A bus driver was equally direct: "Cash is dead, man. Make it simple, cheap and easy, and people here will do it."
Scepticism runs much deeper among lifelong residents. Martin, a refuse collector, shrugged: "I’ve been on Bermie [Bermuda] my whole life. We’ve had many plans like this, and it ain’t never changed me. My money is in gold. Only thing I can trust." One lady was even blunter: "Sounds like another hair-brained scheme to me."
Many others sit somewhere in the middle – hopeful but wary. Mary, a parson’s wife, said people are open to anything that helps after the tough post-Covid years, "but they haven’t really told us how it will help, just that it will." Awareness remains patchy at best. Several people Sandmark spoke to had only vague notions of "free money" from an airdrop at the community event and struggled to explain what blockchain actually is.
How Bermuda compares to peers
Bermuda is not alone among the Atlantic and Caribbean islands in chasing digital asset opportunities, but its approach stands out for its ambition and the BMA’s steady hand. The Cayman Islands have become a hub for institutional digital asset funds and tokenized structures, focusing on fund formation and tax efficiency rather than government-wide onchain systems. The British Virgin Islands (BVI) excels at company formation, token issuances and virtual asset service providers.
Burt and his team see this as critical for Bermuda’s long-term survival. In a fast-moving world, Hamilton cannot afford to let its insurance and international business edge slip away.
Businesses show mixed outlook
Smaller merchants and tourism operators would welcome lower fees, and one accountant at Arch Capital called it "a natural evolution for Bermuda," saying his firm has been underwriting crypto for years. Another at Axis insurers liked the operational side: "Immutable ledgers mean cleaner reconciliations."
But many are nervous. One industry observer told Sandmark that major reinsurers are "terrified" that onchain transparency could expose sensitive pricing, contracts and client data normally kept private. Classification questions linger. Transition must be gradual. "It won’t be overnight; phased pilots make sense," they said.
If it works, Bermuda could stand out as a smart, forward-thinking financial centre that translates regulatory leadership into real benefits for its people. If it stumbles or drags on, it risks looking like yet another jurisdiction where blockchain hype has outpaced delivery.
Balancing innovation, tradition
This push captures Bermuda perfectly – the laid-back islanders are being guided towards a fully onchain future. The Stellar pilot is the first real test. Premier Burt says he will keep pushing digital finance even after October, not as a parallel experiment, but as everyday infrastructure.
But the real joy of doing island business is the social engagement with the locals, who gather in the evenings for stories of boats and planes lost in the triangle. And, frankly, you don't need a blockchain to make a swizzle.
