The Philippines has postponed the release of its crypto regulations until further notice. This is to give the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) more time to come up with better ways of protecting investors, according to thee chairman of the commission, Emilio Aquino.
Citing the collapse of FTX, Aquino said that although work is still ongoing for the regulatory framework which could be released in 2023, the commission needed to study the cause of FTX’s collapse as a precaution.
“We were supposed to bring it out late last year, but we don’t want people to get burned,” Aquino originally commented in Filipino and was translated to English using Google Translate. “The issuance of digital assets is a form of capital raising, and we have to study that because, like in FTX, they were transferring billions left, right, and center.”
FTX, a crypto derivatives giant based in the Bahamas, collapsed last year following a bank run. It was one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, so its collapse was traumatic and cost investors billions of dollars in investments. It is these losses that have made the Pilippines to take its regulatory framework more seriously to ensure a similar incident doesn’t occur in the country.
Philippines Cautions Against Gemini
The regulatory climate in the US has been unfriendly, causing many crypto companies to exit the country. For some companies like Gemini, leaving the US is not an option, but they are building offshore business connections.
It is in light of this that the company launched a derivatives trading platform that caters to customers outside the US. The Philippines happens to be one of the countries the platform serves, but with the FTX collapse still fresh, Regulators have cautioned against Gemini’s platform.
The Philippines’ SEC in a regulatory note said that Gemini Trust Company, the parent company behind Gemini Foundation, the derivatives exchange platform, was not registered with the commission and operated without the necessary license or authority.
This skepticism is likely to affect other crypto companies such as Binance who are looking to secure two licenses, the virtual asset service provider (VASP) and the electronic money issuer (EMI) licenses, in the Philippines. Binance is already under intense regulatory pressure in the US that makes it uncertain if it will continue to operate in the country.
Philippines Still a Crypto Hub
Despite the caution the Philippines is excercising concerning cry
