The recent collapse of trading platform FTX caused cryptocurrencies to fall markedly and led to unprecedented losses for global investors. In Taiwan, as many as 500,000 people who held savings with FTX have reportedly lost entire portfolios or significant sums, with some discovering they have nowhere to turn for compensation or legal recourse.
That is because Bahamas-based FTX operated overseas with foreign registration, meaning that Taiwanese authorities could not regulate it. Although government agencies, including the Financial Supervisory Commission and the central bank, have for years reminded the public of the risks of investing in cryptocurrencies given their volatility, a frenzy of interest remained in using such tools as a hedge against possible losses in traditional assets such as stocks and bonds, with bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin among mainstream investment targets.
However, there has been little to stop cryptocurrencies from being used in an increasing number of financial scams and money laundering activities. In several cases, cryptocurrency firms promoted handsome profits for would-be investors, with high-tier investors expecting even higher returns on their investments, but such firms had almost never made those promised returns before being caught by authorities.
There were also reports of people being defrauded when transferring bitcoin through specialized automated teller machines installed locally in shops and streetside, while criminal rings used the currency to transfer money overseas.
Some people had once claimed that cryptocurrency was a disruptive innovation to central banks and the global banking system, as blockchain and other digital technologies would help reshape how people think about money. However, cryptocurrencies were beginning to plunge amid rising global interest rates even before the FTX collapse. The FTX debacle only further emphasizes the opaque nature of cryptocurrency exchanges, with talk of suspicious accounting and clandestine financial flows emerging more commonly in the crypto world.
Taiwan in 2018 passed amendments to the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法), which enabled the government to regulate virtual currency platforms and trading businesses as financial institutions, and last year implemented new money laundering regulations that require cryptocurrency exchanges in Taiwan to report transactions exceeding NT$500,000. It was not until early this month, four years after the law was amended, that local law enforcement agencies froze cryptocurrency transactions at an exchange.
Taiwanese laws are too conservative in dealing with cryptocurrency scams, while local prosecutors and government agencies are too timid to ask exchanges to help them suspend transactions and track down recipients, lawmakers said. They have cited advances in Taiwanese criminals’ methods for illicit activities, while law enforcement agencies and their investigative capabilities continue to lag far behind international standards.
Apart from the legal foundation for cracking down on cryptocurrency fraud, the government could do more to provide agencies with investigative tools that help law enforcers uncover crimes enabled by cryptocurrency. This could include training in the ways such criminals think and behave when interacting with cryptocurrency. Considering the nation’s digital and technological capabilities, Taiwan should not be lagging so far behind other countries in fighting crimes involving cryptocurrency.
Taiwan can catch up if the top administrators in law enforcement and the judicial system find the determination and motivation to deal with these problems.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS