Pawee is an assistant dean for communications, a director of the Legal Training and Consultancy Center (LeTec) and a lecturer in law of the Faculty of Law, Thammasat University. He is also a research affiliate of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Also, he is a former regulatory specialist for digital economy of the World Bank Group. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
Apart from his academic positions, he serves as a committee member of the Thai Fintech Association.
His research focuses on FinTech, digital assets, banking laws and regulations. He has co-authored eight industry reports on FinTech law and policy and contributed book chapters on ASEAN FinTech laws and digital assets regulations in China PRC and HKSAR.
Regulating Digital Assets in Thailand: Problems and Future Prospects
Abstract:
One of the key challenges facing regulatory perspectives on digital assets in Thailand is that different authorities have different viewpoints on the use of digital assets. These inconsistent stances and the lack of collaboration amongst different agencies lead to a problem in the use of digital assets and their supervision.
Regarding regulations for digital assets businesses, there are bespoke regulations which are the Emergency Decree on Digital Assets Businesses and subordinate rules. However, there is a lack of clear-cut guidelines, such as the criteria to differentiate utility, security and other types of tokens/digital assets. Moreover, complex features of digital assets as well as distributed ledger technology (DLT) lead to other complex legal issues for which there is still no regulatory support. For instance, the legality of so-called “DAOs” (Decentralized autonomous organizations) and law enforcement or the confiscation of cryptocurrencies.
In Thailand, the Emergency Decree and subordinate rules, restrictions were set to prevent any possible risks related to all stakeholders that would be involved in this type of business. However, some of the concerns associated with this are: (1) Foreign business restrictions. (2) The limitation of the types of digital asset businesses under the Emergency Decree. (3) The implementation of regulations on capital gains tax.
To this extent, the practical guidelines should be considered by Thai authorities to ensure a consistent approach to regulatory implementation. The guidelines provide a more adaptive and flexible approach for the regulator in regulating digital-asset-related activities. This can also reflect the use of soft law mechanisms that have the potential to make related regulations more adaptive.