DUNEDIN - A 14-year-old paid in Tether for running a shop on Minecraft's oldest anarchy server found he could not cash it out. The New Zealand exchanges he tried wanted identity documents he did not have and set a minimum age he did not meet.
Two years on at 16, he trades peer-to-peer, arranging deals in person with people he has never met, because no regulated platform in the country will open an account for him where he can buy and sell crypto to NZD.
There is no law requiring local providers to refuse.
The Department of Internal Affairs, which supervises cryptocurrency businesses under New Zealand's anti-money laundering rules, told Cryptocurrency NZ the legislation sets no minimum age at all.
"The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 does not prescribe minimum age of the customers of a reporting entity," a DIA spokesperson said. "DIA is not aware of any other statutory barriers specifying age of onboarding for NZ exchanges."
The 18 minimum is a commercial decision, made independently by every exchange serving the New Zealand market. It does not stop young people buying cryptocurrency. It moves them somewhere with no verification, no dispute process and no recourse.
Started with crypto before NZD
The teenager, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, held cryptocurrency before he held a bank account. He came to it through a game, working for a shop on 2b2t, the oldest anarchy server in Minecraft, delivering in-game items and handling customer support, and was paid in Tether (USDT).
"I think I was 14 when I first got anything," he said. "Crypto's decentralised nature and ability to be transferred globally without like banks or wire transfers was the main appeal to me."
Earning it turned out to be simpler than spending it.
"When I got my first $20 in bitcoin, I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to withdraw it. I remember trying to sign up to Easy Crypto and Binance and being required to provide KYC."
Know-your-customer checks are the identity verification an exchange must complete before onboarding anyone. He had not heard of them, and at 14 he did not have the documents they asked for.
What happened next is the part the regulated market does not see.
"I did a ton of Google searches on how to sell crypto without KYC until I saw a CNZ article about the p2p trading Discord, which led me to selling and buying my first coins."
Peer-to-peer (P2P) means arranging a deal directly with another person. There is no central middleman, and for anything sizeable it means meeting in person.
"There's always the worry of being robbed or scammed when dealing with p2p," he said. "Face-to-face meetings are especially quite difficult, without knowing who I'm meeting up with."
"Honestly, I don't know who I'd go to if something went wrong in a trade. If it was face-to-face, I'd report it to the police, but over the internet, I'm just fucked, I'd accept my losses and move on."
He is not avoiding the regulated market on principle. He says he would switch tomorrow if there were a route in.
"If I was able to get my parents to sign off for exchange sign offs I'd 100% start using them for a majority of my trades."
His parents know, roughly.
"The first time I told my parents I got money from selling crypto they seemed very worried that I had been doing illegal stuff online. They have a basic understanding of what I'm doing."
Why the exchanges say no
Binance, which sets an 18 minimum in its own terms, said the requirement is its own rather than a legal one.
"There is no specific New Zealand legal requirement mandating that users of virtual asset exchange services must be at least 18," a Binance spokesperson said. "Binance's 18+ requirement is an eligibility criterion set out in our Terms of Use and forms part of our approach to responsible access and user protection."
Swyftx chief commercial officer Paul Quickenden gave a fuller account of the reasoning.
"As minors, any contracts are generally voidable, which creates legal risk for any provider offering a trading account to a minor," he said.
"In addition our AML/CFT obligations require strict identity verification for every customer. What that means in practice is that a large number of under 18s in NZ typically don't hold all the identity documentation needed to complete AML checks. So while there's no clause in NZ law that explicitly sets an age of 18 for buying crypto, between these two factors and how hard it was to reconcile them, we made the decision not to offer accounts to U18s."
The legal risk he describes sits in subpart 6 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017. A contract entered into by a person under 18 is unenforceable against them, though it otherwise takes effect.
A court can also inquire into whether the contract was fair and reasonable when it was made, and if it finds it was not, cancel it or order compensation.
In deciding, it has to weigh the nature of the contract and the age and means of the minor. For a volatile asset sold to a 15-year-old, that is an open question rather than a settled one.
DIA confirmed the call sits entirely with the provider.
"Whether a reporting entity chooses to offer products/services to people under 18, including any parenting/guardian arrangements, is a matter for that entity provided they ensure they remain compliant with the AMLCFT Act and any other statutory requirements relevant to their business."
It has been solved before
Sharesies already walks thiis line.
Kids Accounts are opened and managed by a parent or another adult on the child's behalf, and a Sharesies spokesperson told CNZ those accounts have access to Sharesies Crypto, alongside exposure through exchange-traded funds and KiwiSaver.
One restriction applies - the feature the 16-year-old would have needed.
"Kids Accounts do not have access to the crypto transfers feature," the spokesperson said, meaning crypto held elsewhere cannot be brought in from an outside wallet or platform.
His Tether was earned outside any exchange and sits in a wallet he controls.
Asked whether under-18s were asking for crypto access, Sharesies said it "doesn't gauge crypto demand in people under 18 years of age."
Swyftx is working toward something comparable.
Quickenden said the company is exploring a parent custody structure "where a verified adult account holder could extend supervised, permission limited access to a minor within their own account, while remaining the legal owner and the verified party."
"We think it's similar to how Sharesies offer youth accounts."
It has been tried at a crypto exchange before.
Quickenden said Easy Crypto, which Swyftx acquired, offered under-18 access for a period.
"Demand was very low and substantially lower than their proportion of the population. Most of it was driven by parents is my recollection."
He added that young people often have little disposable income.
Outside the perimeter
The Financial Markets Authority does not regulate most cryptocurrency, and says that is precisely why exchanges write their own rules.
"Most cryptocurrencies are not regulated by the FMA in the way that shares, managed funds and other regulated financial products are," Manager Regulatory Services Samantha McGuire told CNZ.
"Cryptocurrency service providers may therefore set their own eligibility, onboarding and risk management requirements, including minimum age thresholds for customers."
Asked where young people locked out of local platforms go instead, McGuire did not dispute the premise.
"Some people may access cryptocurrency through offshore providers, peer-to-peer arrangements, or other channels outside New Zealand-based platforms. People generally have fewer protections when using unregulated or overseas providers, and it can be more difficult to recover funds if something goes wrong."
Peer-to-peer arrangements is where he went. Fewer protections is what he found.
The 16 year old sees the nuance to the situation.
"I can understand why youth are restricted from VASPS, as the lack of documentation plus possibility of exploitation, ie someone else signing up an account for you and using it”, he said.
Virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, is the regulatory term for exchanges and similar businesses.
His objection is to where the line sits rather than that one exists.
"I think the current laws regarding KYC and AML do need worked on, especially regarding youth, eg 16 plus. If I'm legally allowed to drive a car, I should be able to use crypto exchanges."
Everyone is acting sensibly and a 16-year-old still ends up meeting strangers in a car park with no recourse.