Thailand’s Leadership In Cryptocurrency

Thailand is the only country that is not bothered by the debate about which category digital assets and currencies fit into. Rather, they have made a Digital Asset Business Decree on defining digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Thailand’s tax law was also revised to include the law allowing them to extract revenue from the crypto industry. This move has been criticized by investors as most are of the school of thought that crypto should not be regulated.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand wants to find the balance between legitimate crypto users and those that use it for gambling and fraudulent activities, this was stated at TechSauce conference which held in Bangkok last month by the director of the SEC’s fintech department, Archari Suppiroj. Archari believes that if too much restriction is placed on the regulations, Thailand will lose its ability to offer protection to investors and a lot of people will go overseas. With regulations, validity is improved. There are rules laid out by the Thailand regulations for businesses that want to operate as dealers, brokers or exchange platforms.

In Thailand, ICO processes are formalized like debt or equity issuance. Another interesting aspect of the new rules is that all Initial coin offerings (ICO’s) must be balanced with one definite cryptocurrency from the seven. There has been no definite naming from the SEC but according to Archari, they are Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Ethereum, Ethereum classic, Litecoin, Stellar, and Ripple. According to her, these coins were picked due to their convertibility and liquidity rate.

There is a 15% tax taken on the profits gotten and this tax can be accredited against the full year income tax bill of an individual. There is also a 7% VAT taken on digital asset trading under the present tax code. Thailand is currently competing with over a large number of countries that are known to be crypto focal points. There is, however, no assurance that Thailand will overtake South Korea, Japan or Taiwan regardless of their new rules.