Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
Thailand’s crypto UBI
Thailand has a national airdrop in the works under which every citizen 16 years and older receives 10,000 baht ($285).
According to local news reports on Aug. 30, Thailand’s ruling Pheu Thai party will consult the Bank of Thailand in developing a “utility type 1” token necessary for the airdrop. The solution will be a Know Your Customer blockchain-based infrastructure that sources say will take at least six months to roll out. A 100 baht fee will also be charged per user for the KYC process. In addition, the solution will require the approval of the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission.
Real estate developer and crypto investor Srettha Thavisin was elected as Thailand’s prime minister on Aug. 22. During campaigning, Thavisin promised to give each person 10,000 baht in basic income stimulus via “digital currency” if elected into power. In 2021, Thavisin’s firm, Sansiri, purchased a 15% stake in Thai asset tokenization provider X Spring for 1.6 billion baht ($45.7 million).
The Thailand Development and Research Institute said funding for the Thavisin Airdrop will come from tax collection in the 2024 fiscal year. The total budget estimate for the project is 560 billion baht ($16 billion).
The airdrop will not be equivalent to fiat baht funds, however. Users reportedly can only spend the digitized tokens within four kilometers of their residence. The tokens will only be valid for a period of six months and cannot be converted into cash or used to settle debts. Thavisin’s government is expected to assume office by the end of September.
Thailand’s incoming prime minister, Srettha Thavisin (Twitter)
Delio users’ assets slashed in half
More bad news is coming for users of troubled South Korean Bitcoin lender Delio.
According to local news reports on Aug. 30, the South Korean crypto lending giant, which holds over $1.2 billion in Bitcoin and Ether, is expecting a recovery rate of just 50% to 70% on its assets. On June 14, Delio suspended deposits and withdrawals after disclosing significant counterparty exposure to fellow South Korean Bitcoin lender Haru Invest.
On June 13, Haru Invest also suspended deposits and withdrawals after allegations of fraudulent activities arose surrounding its operator, B&S Holdings. Haru Invest is currently in bankruptcy proceedings. Likewise, Delio is currently under investigation by the country’s regulatory authorities for allegations of fraud, embezzlement and breach of trust. The platform previously announced that it would resume withdrawals, although no updates on such a timeline have since been given.
Photo allegedly showing empty Haru Invest corporate offices after the shutdown announcement. (Telegram)
Vietnam’s booming crypto market
Vietnam is currently ranked first in the world in crypto adoption, with up to 19% of its population between the ages of 18 and 64 using digital assets.
That’s according to an Aug. 30 report authored by Vietnamese venture capital firms Kyros Ventures and Coin 68, together with Animoca Brands. Currently, the Southeast Asian country is the home to around 200 blockchain projects and is expected to generate $109.4 million in revenue from crypto exchanges this year. The country’s crypto users are forecast to grow to 12.37 million by 2027.
Among the highlights, 76% of Vietnamese crypto users say that they invest in digital assets based on advice from friends, a number 2.5 times higher than individuals surveyed in the U.S. Nearly 70% of respondents said the crypto bear market would last less than one year or has already ended. Almost half of respondents say that centralized exchanges offer just as much utility as decentralized ones, but 90% of crypto owners use decentralized exchanges.
Vietnamese investor perspectives on the ongoing crypto winter (Kyros Ventures)
Binance Japan to list 100 coins
On Aug. 30, Tsuyoshi Chino, CEO of Binance Japan, held an online business briefing discussing the exchange’s domestic expansion strategy. During the session, Chino said that Binance Japan would seek to list 100 coins and tokens “as soon as possible.”
Local news reports note that Binance Japan currently provides spot trading of cryptocurrencies alongside staking “Simple Earn” programs. The use of margin trading is currently not available unless the exchange obtains a regulatory license. The presentation also revealed that its parent exchange, Binance, has surpassed 150 million in user count, with an average daily trading volume of $65 billion. Earlier this year, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase ceased operations in Japan, citing difficult market conditions.
In a government-sponsored conference promoting the digital Chinese yuan central bank digital currency, officials from the City of Shenzhen pledged 15 million digital yuan ($2.1 million) for municipal airdrops over the next three years. Binqquan Wei, vice governor of Agricultural Bank of China Shenzhen, said that the digital yuan has proven during trials to be a highly efficient method for consumer transaction receipts via its immutable distributed ledger technology:
“The platform currently has more than 200 merchants, involving 11 key industries such as education and training, catering, pet services, elderly care and sports.”
China’s central government has been heavily promoting the digital yuan CBDC as a means of stimulating the country’s ailing economy amid a looming recession. In its latest figures, the CBDC has surpassed $123 billion in cumulative transactions since 2021, with test sites running in 17 provinces and 26 districts.
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Zhiyuan Sun
Zhiyuan Sun is a journalist at Cointelegraph focusing on technology-related news. He has several years of experience writing for major financial media outlets such as The Motley Fool, Nasdaq.com and Seeking Alpha.
Thousands of savers face potential losses after a $2.7 million shortfall was discovered at Ziglu, a British crypto fintech that entered special administration.
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
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10:43
Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of the crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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0:39
How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system ‘frustrating’ and ‘stressed’
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for others.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
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She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.