Thailand’s SEC Greenlights 4 Crypto Companies Amid Zipmex Turmoil

As one of the first nations in Southeast Asia to pass legislation that directly handles digital assets, Thailand, a nation with over 3.6 million bitcoin users, has opened its doors to firms involved in the industry.

In fact, the tourism ministry has gone so far as to lay out plans for turning the nation into a refuge for international tourists interested in Bitcoin. In light of this, some cryptocurrency businesses have received formal approval from Thailand's financial authorities.

License

Four further operators of digital assets have received licenses from Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These include T-BOX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and Krungthai XSpring, a full-service brokerage connected to one of the nation's top banks.

Coindee, a cryptocurrency adviser and fund manager, and Leif Capital Asset Management, which also manages funds, are the other two businesses that received regulatory permission. Notably, the four companies have not yet begun operations since the SEC is checking over their offerings.

As a result of these developments, Thailand currently has 21 fully regulated operators of digital assets, including 9 exchanges, 9 brokers, and 3 fund managers. It happens at the same time that the SEC has opened an inquiry into Singaporean exchange Zipmex (which also does business in Thailand) for allegedly breaking trading regulations by preventing client withdrawals last month. Soon later, the SEC disclosed that users of Zipmex may contribute data through an online forum on the company's main website.

The regulator alleges that Zipmex provided insufficient justification for stopping withdrawals, and as a result, the company restored withdrawals for smaller alternative currencies while keeping bigger assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) frozen.

Bitcoin Stance

Thailand was seen as having a more open and progressive position after 2018 when the Digital Asset Act, which originally meant to address security, fraud, and initial coin offers (ICO), was passed. In Thailand, 5.2 percent of the overall population owns digital assets.

Regulations changed over time, and most recently the government abandoned its original proposal to retain 15% of bitcoin transactions. The first blockchain education and research program in the nation was established via a collaboration between the Chulalongkorn University and the blockchain network Tezos.

In order to support the business, Thailand has further loosened tax regulations until the end of 2023, allowing cryptocurrency dealers on government-approved exchanges to avoid paying a 7 percent value-added tax (VAT).

On April 1 of this year, Thailand's Security and Exchange Commission, citing worries about money laundering and financial instability, outlawed the use of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. The SEC said that because of their volatility and high transaction costs, digital assets do not increase the efficiency of the payments system. However, it was made clear that the restriction does not apply to trading in cryptocurrencies, just to using them to make payments.

Nevertheless, with the bull market in full force in 2021, Thai crypto volumes increased by 600%. The world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance, was said to be attempting to re-establish itself in Thailand by establishing a jointly owned Gulf Binance crypto exchange with Gulf Innova earlier this year.