The Finance Ministry recently took steps to put the brakes on the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) bandwagon by threatening to hit the emerging ICO market with value-added tax and capital gains tax. The threat follows the February launch of the country’s first digital tokens, Jfin coins, which sold out in 55 hours, raising Bt660 million for Jmart. Earlier this month another Thai firm, Zmine, followed suit, launching its ICO to raise Bt180 million via the issuing of digital tokens to finance its cryptocurrency-mining business. On securities tokens, it is also necessary to introduce regulations to combat manipulation in a way similar to the SEC rules on stocks and other equities. In this context, it is reasonable for the Finance Ministry to takepreventive steps against ICOs and cryptocurrencies, combined withthe SEC’s readiness to regulatethem properly.

Source: The Nation Bangkok May 03, 2018 17:15 UTC