The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand has granted an exemption, permitting institutional investors and extremely wealthy individuals to purchase cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The SEC’s Secretary-General, Pornanong Budsaratragoon, announced on Monday that asset managers would now be permitted to purchase spot bitcoin (BTC) ETFs on American markets.
The SEC Act classifies spot bitcoin ETFs as securities as opposed to digital assets. Thanks to this reclassification, Thai securities firms can now participate in these transactions as well. In the future, the SEC may consider making this investment opportunity available to private investors as well.
“We need to carefully consider whether to allow asset management firms to invest in digital assets directly due to the high risk,” said Pornanong. “Asset management firms asked the SEC for them to have exposure in digital assets, especially bitcoin and spot bitcoin ETFs.”
The Thai SEC declared in January 2024 that they would not permit asset management companies to introduce spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The regulator has up to now mandated that people can only invest in digital assets through local exchanges that are registered.