The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is planning to make several significant tweaks in the existing cryptocurrency regulations in Thailand, in an attempt to keep up with a rapid pace of developments surrounding the field and facilitate the growth of digital assets in the space.
As China digs deeper into blockchain and studies it uses across a myriad of thriving industries in the region; other Asian countries are bracing themselves and making plans to further their own digital assets industry with tweaks and revisions to existing laws.
Cryptocurrency regulations in Thailand likely to be subjected to alterations
According to the local news media outlet on Sunday, the regulators are examining whether the existing royal decree leaves any stumbling blocks or ambiguity due to which investors could fall prey to scams and malpractices.
Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, secretary-general of the SEC, confirmed the news stating that the regulators are doing their best to adapt to the fast-changing pace of digital assets market needs and making sure that the laws are in line with current and future market environment. We are in the process of removing any likely hurdles and closing loopholes, she furthered.
Addressing the shortcomings
To offer a background, the royal decree came into force in May last year. It classified the secondary business intermediaries into four categories – initial coin offering portals, digital assets exchanges, brokerage firms, and dealers. It comprises cryptocurrencies, digital tokens, or any other form of the electronic data unit, as classified by the SEC, and necessitates applying for requisite licenses from the Finance Ministry when dealing with these assets. Moreover, the SEC oversees the approvals of ICO portals.
The royal decree also penalizes unapproved digital token issuers and solicitors of illegitimate cryptocurrency investments with fines up to five hundred thousand baht (THB 500,000) or two times the value of the digital transaction.
Suwanmongkol declared that while many firms have shown a keen interest in issuing digital tokens; however, the three ICO portal companies approved by the SEC have not commenced their operations yet. Besides, the five firms that have been authorized with the digital asset exchange licenses, which include names such as Bitcoin Co that called it quits in August and Huobi Thailand Co Ltd that is yet to start its services, are clearly struggling to take off.
Thus the legislation is pulling out all stops to identify the potential obstacles and offer enough clarity to facilitate legit use of digital assets. It aims to protect investors from the risk of cryptocurrency scams and frauds that continue to spot inadequacies in the present framework and exploit it to deceive people.
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