The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand (SEC) will hold a public hearing in February with the goal of determining the requirements for retail investors that want to open a new account in order to trade crypto.
This comes as a result of the regulator having concerns regarding the safety of investors as a result of the growing prices for cryptocurrencies and because of the increasing number of registrations on local exchanges.
The agency has plans to investigate various qualification parameters that have the role of determining if new crypto investors have the necessary experience and financial resources to carry on with the risks that come with crypto trading and its volatility. Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, the SEC Secretary-General of Thailand, declared:
“We need to establish eligibility criteria — age, trading experience, and income or wealth — to limit risk.”
Suwanmongkol mentioned that these types of measures are already mandatory for high yield bonds, but that those are available only for certain types of investors. During the first week of this month alone, there have been 124,000 new investors that were registered on crypto exchanges. This brought the monthly influx of new investors on February the 8th to 594,000.
The decision to organize a hearing came at the request of Arkhom Termpittayapaisith, the finance minister of Thailand, who asked SEC to keep an eye on local crypto exchanges in order to protect the new traders.