Thailand SEC bans meme coins and NFTs

Certain types of cryptocurrencies such as meme coins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), utility tokens and social tokens are banned on crypto trading platforms in Thailand as per the order of the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, June 14.

The new rule was agreed upon by the SEC Board during their meeting last Wednesday, June 9. It is now under the section ‘Rules, Conditions and Procedures for Undertaking Digital Asset Businesses’ which states the prohibition of the following tokens and the reasons behind them:

‘(1) Meme token: having no clear objective or substance or underlying, and whose price [runs] on social media trends; (2) Fan token: tokenized by the fame of influencers; (3) Non-fungible token (NFT)’.

Some of the coins included in the ban are Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and SafeMoon (SAFEMOON) along with coins issued by digital asset exchanges or related persons.

According to the SEC, the new law was implemented to protect crypto users from cryptocurrency tokens that lack purpose or substance and have no clear explanation of their use. It took effect on June 11th after being published in the Government Gazette. The SEC also announced in the same press release that exchange platforms have 30 days from June 11th to comply with the new rule and delist the prohibited coins.

This is the latest move by the SEC that imposes restrictions on the domestic digital currency market after its announcement on its plan to license any DeFi-related activity. The regulator stated that it’s specifically targeting DeFi protocols that issue tokens.

‘The issuance of digital tokens must be authorised and overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the issuer is required to disclose information and offer the coins through the token portals licensed under the Digital Asset Decree,’ the Thai SEC stated.

The announcement was made after the launch of Thai DeFi Tuktuk Finance’s native token that runs on top of the blockchain of Bitkub, a popular Thai crypto exchange platform.

As of today, Thai nationals are still allowed to trade in various cryptocurrencies with the exception of the delisted tokens.

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