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The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand has unveiled the details of the country’s regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings, including licensing requirements, fees, and a list of seven approved cryptocurrencies.

Approved Cryptocurrencies

The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Friday the details of the country’s cryptocurrency and initial coin offering (ICO) regulations. The measures were approved at the regulator’s June 7 meeting and are expected to go into effect later on this month, according to local media. “The proposed approach has been through public hearings in several channels,” MGR Online wrote.

This announcement follows the decree which went into effect on May 14, putting the Thai SEC in charge of crypto regulations. It also follows the country’s crypto taxation announcement.

According to SEC deputy secretary-general Tipsuda Thavaramara, the Commission’s regulatory scope includes ICOs, crypto exchanges, brokerage firms, dealers and other parties permitted by the Finance Ministry, the Bangkok Post reported, adding that initially:

"The SEC will allow seven cryptocurrencies, used for initial coin offerings (ICOs), to be traded as trading pairs. They are bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, ethereum classic, litecoin, ripple, and stellar."

“Some of the main criteria used by the SEC to assess cryptocurrency trading pairs,” the news outlet detailed, are the “consensus credibility and cryptocurrency liquidity.” Thai Rath publication added that these seven cryptocurrencies are approved because they do not promote privacy.

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The untraceable state of cryptos is a matter of concern in terms of governments. A structure that they can't fully control scares them. But if the process goes that way, they will have to take a moderate attitude.

The fact that privacy coins like Monero, Zcash e.t.c allows for possible evasion of tax and other government controlled activities, it is always going to be under the radar of the governments and even sometimes outright ban of their usage. This does not mean that people will stop using these coins. There are still lots of advantages for the average user of these privacy coins, hopefully the government considers these aspects too.

There are many projects in development that seek to improve privacy of Bitcoin, Ethereum and some other coins. Some of those projects require protocol changes, others are just tools. Even Lightning Network has pretty good privacy compared to standard online transactions, so if regulators are really concerned about privacy features of cryptocurrencies, they'll eventually have to address them in coins like BTC, LTC and ETH that are considered transparent for now.