Thai SEC Approves 5 of 50 ICO Applicants; Authorized Entities Now Allowed to Raise Funds

A new law in Thailand saw the fast-tracking of government regulations on cryptocurrency and the fund-raising capabilities of initial coin offerings (ICOs). Now, the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirmed that 5 ICOs have been deemed ready to raise funds according to the SEC’s rules, Cointelegraph reported.

Thawatchai Kiatkwankul, director of corporate finance in the SEC’s equity department, revealed that of the 50 ICOs applying for approval, only five made it through. The director didn’t reveal the details of those that made the cut, nor did he provide hints at their background.

However, he did share certain attributes of ICOs that will make them favorable in the eyes of the SEC. Kiatkwankul said that ventures that can be easily examined and possess valuable commercial traits will most likely be green-lighted for fundraising.

The SEC mandates that all brokers, ICOs, and cryptocurrency exchanges comply with the restrictions imposed by the government body. Moreover, the ICOs now have a hard cap of 300,000 baht ($9,278) per individual retail investor, while coin offerings to institutional and high-net-worth investors are assigned “unlimited investment amount.”

This is to protect ordinary people from over-investing because even with these regulations in place, they’re still at risk of losing money, with ICOs not being immune to market failure. However, a recent report by the Boston College Carroll School of Management stated that an average ICO investment can see an 82 percent profit return.

This was after the researchers leafed through 4,000 drafted and launched ICOs. The report highlighted that from the initial token sale to the first day of listing them in a crypto exchange, the average return for the investments was at 179 percent. What’s more, investors who were patient enough to keep their tokens for more than 180 days had a 150 percent to a whopping 430 percent capital return.

Jaw-dropping as this number is, it’s important to note that the ICOs included in the report all started in January 2017, back when the crypto market was brewing for its meteoric rise. Right now, crypto isn’t doing so well, with its flagship digital currency Bitcoin (BTC) dropping to $6,590 after soaring to more than $19,000 in December 2017.