The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) is drawing up national standards for initial coin offerings (ICOs) to make virtual tokens as easy to invest in as stocks and just as liquid, FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
The draft is to be completed by June next year, he told a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee.
Koo made the remarks after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗) said at a question-and-answer session on whether the government would regulate ICOs.
To conduct an ICO, businesses typically post a white paper on the Internet that outlines their ideas on token use, issue requirements and expected growth before offering virtual tokens for sale.
However, 127 white papers worldwide were found last year to have been faked and as of April, 80 papers were found to be inaccurate, Tseng said. Citing data from ICO advisory firm Satis Group, Tseng said that 81 percent of ICOs have been identified as scams.
The commission would regulate ICOs, Koo said, but added that tokens exchanged for goods, such as those used in accruing points at convenience stores or mileage points accepted by airlines, would not be covered by the standards.
“The more we regulate, the more this new economic behavior wanes,” Koo said.
The commission has no intention of curbing the creativity and productivity associated with cryptocurrencies if they are not used as securities, he said.
“People often confuse an ICO with the trading of cryptocurrencies,” Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director-General Tsai Li-ling (蔡麗玲) said by telephone.
An ICO is a type of public fundraising activity, whereas cryptocurrency trading is similar to trading in gold, for which the commission only implements money laundering controls, Tsai said.
If the token in an ICO functioned similar to a security, the commission would define it as a “securities token” and subject it to the Securities and Exchange Act (證交法), Tsai said.
The issuer would also need to disclose information similar to what companies that are publicly traded need to do now, she said.
However, without referencing the standards of other countries, it would be difficult to draft standards for ICOs, Tsai said.
The government tends to regard cryptocurrencies as virtue commodities or assets rather than currencies, because they have no intrinsic value, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told the committee, explaining why the commission should be responsible for regulating ICOs.
The commission said it has helped prosecutors investigate three cases of suspected ICO fraud.
One of the cases involved a private company advertising that coins could be exchanged for equities, which might have violated the Securities and Exchange Act and the Banking Act (銀行法), the commission said.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS