Thailand may approve 5 initial coin offerings this month

Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may approve five initial coin offerings (ICOs) this month, according to a report by Bangkok Post.

However, the token sales might have to wait until the royal decree, finalised last month, comes into force.

As per the report, Thawatchai Kiatkwankul, Director of Corporate Finance in the equity department at the SEC, said that 5 of the 50 projects expecting to raise capital from the Thai markets and pending approval are ready as initial pilot projects.

Given the enormous growth potential of ICOs, Kiatkwankul said that the SEC is gearing up to expand and merge its ICO registration unit with that for IPO (Initial Public Offering) registration.

He also said that more recruits will be hired to serve the growing demand.

While the particulars of the 5 ICOs that are pending approval are yet to be made public, Kiatkwankul said that all projects need to have commercial value and need to be vetted before they can be considered for registration.

The SEC will allow seven cryptocurrencies used for ICOs to be traded as trading pairs namely, bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, ethereum classic, litecoin, ripple and stellar lumens.

After several public hearings, a royal decree defining digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, came into effect. The decree defined cryptocurrencies as digital assets and digital tokens.

All participants including ICO issuers, digital exchanges, brokers and dealers involved with digital asset transactions, need to mandatorily register with the SEC within 90 days of the effective date, and seek an approval from the Finance Ministry before engaging in the digital asset business.

The report also clarified that while each ICO can be offered to institutional investors and extremely high net-worth individuals at an unlimited investment amount, there is a cap of 300,000 baht or around Rs 6.3 lakh per retail investor and ICO project.