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Update Regarding the Legalities of Digital Currency in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests we are going to be discussing digital currencies or so called crypto currencies in this video. 

We had some prior videos on this channel where we have been talking about the sort of evolution of the legal infrastructure that has been coming more into focus in the past few months here in the Kingdom. I have some further updates with respect to that. Both of these articles are from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com. The first one titled: Cryptocurrency Law Takes Effect. This was May13th, 2018. Quoting directly: "The Royal Decree to regulate digital asset related transactions came into force on Sunday after it was published in The Royal Gazette. The hundred section law defines crypto currencies as digital assets and digital tokens. It tasked the Security Exchange Commission to control and regulate the digital assets." So that is the first thing. We had a Royal Decree that came out with respect to this issue and we are all still kind of trying to deal with the ramifications of that. In a further follow-up article, again Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, titled: Firms Scramble to Comply with Digital Asset Decree published May 5th 2018. Quoting directly: "With a Royal Decree governing digital asset transactions taking effect Monday, companies and digital exchanges are preparing themselves to comply with the registration process with an executive requesting the government establish an official digital exchange platform. All market participants including initial coin offering issuers, ICO, digital exchanges and other relevant parties related to digital asset transactions are required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 90 days from the effective date.

Well what does this mean? We now have a framework in place. As noted in the first article there was a hundred section law that was published in The Royal Gazette, which is somewhat analogous to being published in the Federal Register in the United States, thereby giving it the force and effect of law as of its effective date. What does this mean? Well the SEC has been tasked with enforcing the laws and there's going to be 90 days from this coming Monday so that would be Monday the 21st of May to go ahead and get into compliance with respect to the aforementioned promulgated legislation. So what does this mean? You have basically got, it is a probably a good idea to hire legal professional assistance in order to get in compliance with the Act in order to be able to do things like issue Crypto currency, issue digital currency. It appears trading is probably going to be involved in this as discussed in other videos. There are taxes now going to be assessed with respect to the transactions occurring that pertain to digital currencies, digital tokens, digital assets for lack of a better term. To Thailand's credit, or the government's credit here in Thailand, they did work with a rather strong sense of alacrity to get this passed, to get legislation promulgated to get a framework by which people can sort of operate in this digital currency sphere. How it is all going to pan out remains to be seen. We are dealing with a few folks, getting people into compliance with respect to these regulations but they are relatively new and it is going to be difficult to see regulatorily how this is all going to play out so we will continue doing videos providing further updates with respect to this issue as time progresses.