Vanuatu citizenship case studies: the shape of the work.
We do not publish client names, photos, or testimonials. The people who acquire a second citizenship value their privacy, and a five-star quote tells you nothing about whether your file will clear. So we publish something more useful: three composited, anonymized file shapes, drawn from the patterns we see across real Vanuatu files, so you can judge whether yours resembles work we have already done.
A quote is reputation. A file shape is information.
Most citizenship firms fill this page with five-star quotes and stock photography. We do not, for two reasons. First, the people who buy a second citizenship guard their privacy, and putting their names on a marketing page would be a betrayal of exactly the discretion they are paying for. Second, and more practically, a testimonial is worthless to you. "Great service, highly recommend" does not tell you whether your 2015 mining income is a problem or whether your pre-exchange coins can be documented.
What tells you that is the shape of a file like yours: what the history looked like, where the work was, what the Financial Intelligence Unit asked, and how it cleared. So that is what we publish. The three profiles below are composites, assembled from real patterns and stripped of identifying detail. Read them as a mirror, not a brochure.
The clean history that still needed a stitch.
The shape: a US-based single applicant, Coinbase and Strike, with coins moved into self-custody steadily through 2017. By the standards of this work, a clean history: regulated exchanges, KYC on file, a hardware wallet funded over years rather than in one suspicious lump.
Where the work was: not proving the wealth was real, which was never in question, but stitching the chain of custody. The reconstruction matched each exchange withdrawal to a signed message from the receiving self-custody address, so the Financial Intelligence Unit could follow the coins from a KYC'd purchase to the wallet that would fund the contribution, without a gap. For a US person, the funding path also had to avoid creating a taxable event, so the structure moved value without a disposal.
The outcome: the file cleared the FIU and reached a passport inside the speed band, with no forced liquidation and no tax event created by the funding path itself. The lesson: even a clean history is not a finished file. The documentation stitch is the work, and it is the part a do-it-yourself applicant most often gets wrong.
Mobility-first, with a CRS-reporting home to hedge.
The shape: a couple whose priority was Asia-Pacific access and who did not want their entire position sitting inside a single CRS-participating country. They had a clean-enough history; the harder question was strategic, not documentary.
Where the work was: the honest read. The Vanuatu DSP fit them well on speed and on tax structure, and we said so. But we also paired that recommendation with a candid account of what a second citizenship does and does not do for tax residency, because Vanuatu participates in CRS and a passport is not a change of tax home. The residency-planning piece, the part that actually moves the reporting needle, we referred out deliberately rather than overpromising it as something a passport delivers.
The outcome: a citizenship that matched their mobility and tax-structure priorities, with the tax-residency work scoped honestly to a qualified adviser. The lesson: the right answer sometimes includes telling a buyer what the product cannot do. A firm that sells you a passport as a tax fix is selling you a future problem.
Pre-exchange coins, a mining period, one application.
The shape: a business owner with early holdings that predated clean exchange records, plus a stretch of mining income, filing a family of four on a single application. This is the hard end of the spectrum, the history that makes a do-it-yourself file stall and that a generic agent quietly declines.
Where the work was: the reconstruction. The earliest coins predated any KYC trail, so they were documented through on-chain history and, for the oldest tranche, a signed affidavit attesting to their acquisition. The mining income was reconstructed from pool payout statements matched to the receiving addresses, turning an informal income stream into a documented one. Each thread, pre-exchange, mining, later clean purchases, was assembled into a single coherent source-of-funds narrative an FATF-aligned officer could audit without follow-up.
The outcome: the family filed together and the file cleared. The lesson generalizes, and it is the whole argument for using an experienced agent: the harder the history, the more the reconstruction experience is worth. A clean Coinbase history barely needs us. A decade of mixed, informal, pre-institutional Bitcoin is exactly where the fee pays for itself.
The history is never the problem. The documentation is.
Across all three shapes, the pattern is the same. The Financial Intelligence Unit has no opinion on whether Bitcoin is real wealth; the question is always procedural. Can the on-chain story be told end to end, with documentation at every transition, in a form a compliance officer can audit without follow-up? The clean US history needed a stitch. The couple needed an honest read of what citizenship does not do. The business owner needed a true reconstruction. The full method is on the source of funds page, and a complete stage-by-stage worked example is in the Journal.
The honest answers.
Are these real Vanuatu citizenship clients?
No, and we say so plainly. These are illustrative composites, assembled from the patterns across real files and stripped of identifying detail. We do not publish client names, photos, or testimonials. What we publish instead is the shape of the file, so you can see whether yours resembles work we have already done.
Why publish file shapes instead of testimonials?
Because a testimonial tells you nothing actionable, and a file shape tells you everything. A five-star quote does not help you judge whether your 2015 mining income or your pre-exchange coins are a problem; a worked composite showing how a similar history cleared does. Same reason we publish the math rather than hiding the price.
How long does a Vanuatu file actually take?
30 to 60 days of government processing from a clean, complete file, with the FIU reporting within roughly a week of completed screening. From first engagement, two to four months including document preparation and reconstruction. The harder the history, the more of that time is reconstruction. Timelines depend on file completeness and are not guaranteed.
What makes a Bitcoin file harder to reconstruct?
Age and informality: pre-exchange holdings predating clean KYC, mining income paid to addresses with no invoice, peer-to-peer or OTC purchases, and coins moved many times before any institution touched them. None are dealbreakers; they are reconstruction work, combining on-chain history, third-party statements, and a signed affidavit for the earliest coins where needed.
Bring the history. We will tell you the shape.
If your file looks like one of these three, we have run it before. If it is harder, that is exactly where the reconstruction experience earns its fee. Read the source-of-funds method, or book a confidential file-read with Adam and bring the wallet history, not the worry.