The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday said that it would clearly define so-called “securities tokens” and draft regulations for security token offerings by June to protect investors.
The FSC, which said at the Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee in October last year that it would draft national standards for initial coin offerings, would not regulate digital tokens that are not securities tokens, FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) told a news conference yesterday.
“It is not easy to draw up the rules, as there is little to draw upon from other countries, but we will try to complete the work by June,” Koo said, adding that many nations are still in the process of making their rules.
Although the US Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed a definition for securities tokens, it seems to be too loose to be applied in Taiwan, Koo said.
There are many types of digital coins, but only those that have securities-like attributes — such as those with the potential to make capital gains through trading, or which serve as units of ownership interests in a corporation or asset — can be defined as securities tokens, Koo said.
As these tokens function similarly to a security, the commission would not draft another set of rules on token trades, but their trade would be regulated under the Securities Exchange Act (證券交易法), Koo said.
The commission would continue to communicate with the exchanges and firms that sell or issue the coins, Koo said.
The commission has no intention of stifling the potential innovations and productivity gains associated with cryptocurrencies if they are not used as securities, the chairman said.
Coins that are not defined as securities tokes and their initial coin offerings would not be regulated, he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day