Thailand SEC Legalizes Crypto Trading & Reveals Crypto Regulations

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand, has introduced various regulations regarding crypto trading in digital assets, license fees, and others. Market regulators are expecting about 10 intermediaries to apply for an operating license after the regulations will come into effect. The regulations will help the public to build confidence in the crypto market.

Guidelines for digital asset trade

The announcement which was released on Friday was majorly focused on details regarding market participants dealing with digital asset trade and related transactions. It talks about the law governing the related transactions.

Thailand’s SEC is currently allowing seven cryptocurrencies to be used for initial cash offerings, and to be traded as trading pairs. These include bitcoin (BTC), ethereum classic (ETC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ripple (XRP), and stellar (XLM).

As per the reports of the Bangkok Post,

“The market regulators are expecting about 10 intermediaries to apply for operating licenses. Half of the intermediaries are expected to be cryptocurrency exchanges, with the rest identified as brokerage firms or dealers.”

Also, read: SEC Makes a Move Towards Crypto Regulations, Appoints its First-ever Crypto Chief

Some major highlights

All market participants, including ICO Issuers, brokers, digital exchanges, and dealers involved with digital exchanges are mandatorily required to be registered with SEC within 90 days of the effective date.  

The Committee had been working on this for quite a long. After several rounds of public hearings, a royal decree regulating business assets was scheduled on May 14. The documents so released contain all the latest and relevant information on cryptocurrency and define them as digital tokens and digital assets. The regulatory scope also includes cryptocurrency exchanges, brokerage firms, dealers and all the other parties so permitted by the Ministry of Finance.

The latest regulations also keep an eye on all those who are selling the digital tokens in an unauthorized way and those conducting unauthentic seminars and misleading the potential investors will be fined heavily, but not more than twice the value of digital currency or at least 500,000 baht.  

The wrongdoers could also be sentenced to imprisonment up to two years. The investment amount is capped at 300,000 baht for several retail investors per person and per ICO, or an amount which is not more than 70% of the total tokens offered for sale in the market.

However, there is no such limit on the retail investors. The guidelines also put a compulsion on the digital token issuers to clearly mention the type of token being sold for seeking a valid approval from SEC. ICO portals are also required to keep a proper check on ICO offerings.

If we talk about the license fees, as per the mandate issued by the SEC, it is 5 million baht, 2.5 each for cryptocurrency distribution and operations. The Annual fee for the digital signature is charged at the rate of 0.002% of trading volume.

Coming onto brokers who are solely involved with crypto trading are required to have 1 million baht worth of registered capital. Digital exchange operators can apply for the licenses up to August 14.

The latest regulations of SEC will curb the unhealthy trade practices in the crypto market while helping investors to gain their trust in crypto space as well.

Let us know your views on the guidelines for crypto trading unveiled by Thailand regulators!