Many of us are familiar with the recent history of U.S. regulators wrangling with cryptocurrency provisions, trying to fit nascent fintech developments into a traditional dollar economy.
However, new reports show an approach by the nation of Thailand that could have ramifications for how national regulators around the world approach crypto in the future.
In a way, it sounds like the process by which different U.S. states court businesses, loosening business tax and licensing laws to make themselves havens for coins.
William Suberg reports in Cointelegraph this morning that Thai lawmakers are considering revision of crypto policy because they feel they have made the country “uncompetitive” for crypto businesses.
“Thailand’s regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wants to reconsider its crypto policy in 2020,” Suberg writes. “The reason, it says, lies in poor uptake of its certification and licensing scheme by cryptocurrency businesses.”
Suberg points out that like many other countries, Thailand has some pretty stiff penalties for noncompliance with crypto regulation. There’s also the cited low rate of success in corporate efforts to move through the regulatory process.
Then there’s the worldwide dearth of Initial Coin Offerings, which mainly revolves around the feasibility of regulatory compliance. Although some content that the ICO market isn’t dead, just sleeping, notables like Michael Novogratz at Galaxy Digital are on record talking about the evident decline of the ICO practice, as in this Forbes article from February.
Here’s how the SEC puts it on the website, taking a more positive tack to describe the potential of ICOs:
“Companies and individuals are increasingly considering initial coin offerings (ICOs) as a way to raise capital or participate in investment opportunities. While these digital assets and the technology behind them may present a new and efficient means for carrying out financial transactions, they also bring increased risk of fraud and manipulation because the markets for these assets are less regulated than traditional capital markets.”
Meanwhile, we’re also still waiting for that Bitcoin ETF – so in terms of American innovation, there are lots of warning signs for investors that broad embrace of cryptocurrencies is not a done deal stateside
We’ll see which nations are first to really grab the bull by the horns and come up with regulatory frameworks that work for these now-popular digital currencies.
