The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Thailand has announced that purchases with digital assets will be unavailable starting April 1st.
While Thailand seemed to be freeing up its cryptocurrency market, the government has decided that payments with digital assets may affect the country’s economy. Therefore, the SEC will be putting the restriction on crypto payments into motion at the beginning of April.
With that being said, investors will still be able to perform other crypto transactions unrelated to actual services of goods that include purchasing, trading, and staking virtual assets.
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More than that, crypto businesses will have to pull any advertisements related to service or product purchases via digital assets and inform users to refrain from using crypto for goods and services.
The initiative to ban crypto payments has stemmed from Thailand’s economic slump, with regulators warning investors that in an instance of a liquidity crisis, the central bank would not be able to "provide assistance to various financial institutions in forms other than the baht."
Likewise, according to the regulator, the dominance of an external currency within the country would pose a larger risk of inflation.
Thailand has been on an upward trajectory in growing its digital asset market over the past several months. However, the government hasn’t been able to come up with a set structure for a regulatory framework.
A few weeks ago, the government of Thailand decided to ease up on the crypto tax for cryptocurrency exchanges and investors into blockchain startups.
