ICO Obstacles: Thai SEC Considers Loosening ICO Regulations

The Thailand (Thai) Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is purportedly considering whether to smoothen the country’s regulation for ICOs. The regulator is carrying out a public hearing to calm down rules on pre-sales and private crypto sales. The SEC has also uncovered plans to stop the usage of crypto sales.

The SEC proclaimed the country’s regulation for ICOs on December 20, 2018, as per a report from the Bangkok Post:   

“The Thai SEC is conducting a public hearing to relax regulations on pre-sales and private sales of ICOs, aiming to reduce impediments for ICO issuers raising funds.”   

Thai Enacted Royal Decree   

The existing regulations serve all crypto sales such as pre-ICO & private sales, and the change will lower down onus for crypto service providers.   

On May 14, 2018, Thailand effected a royal decree on cryptoassets, making Thai SEC in charge of regulating all the operations that are related to cryptoassets and initial coin offerings (ICOs). Crypto dealers, exchanges and brokers have to be legally licensed by the Thai SEC.   

As of now, one crypto dealer and six exchanges have got a temporary license, though there is no ICO portal that has been legally certified. Rapee Sucharitakul, Thai SEC secretary general, recently revealed that an ICO portal was more probably to be certified last month. Nevertheless, after evaluation, the regulator purportedly revealed that the ICO portal won’t be confirmed in 2018 because of some big security concerns.   

Investment Limit for Investors   

From the statement that was posted on the Thai SEC’s website on December 20, Praoporn Senanarong, the Thai SEC assistant secretary general said that the government of Thailand is planning a suitable regulatory framework for crypto sales.   

She stressed that ICO funding should be conducted via an ICO portal that is ratified by the Thai SEC to enable screening of ICOs and ensure transparency. The deadline for submitting regulatory framework comments to Thai SEC is Tuesday January 22, 2019.     

Praoporn added that there isn’t any investment limit for high net worth investors, institutional investors, or and venture capitals. Albeit, there exist a limit for only retail investors. Every token sale will have to be limited to exactly 50 investors for a period of one year, and that of individual investors is $611,957.   

Bangkok Post further revealed that:   

“To prevent exploiting investment opportunities during public ICOs, the SEC plans to require all ICO issuers to distribute all digital tokens to every investor group at the same time after public ICOs end.”