Bangkok (Commonwealth Union)_The financial technology associations of Thailand and Hungary have signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to enable the adoption of blockchain technology in their respective financial sectors.
The MOU between the Thai Fintech Association (TFA) and the Hungarian Blockchain Coalition would allow the two organisations to “share experiences, best practises, and examine areas possibly suitable for direct cooperation”, according to a Facebook post by the Hungarian Embassy in Bangkok.
In a Bangkok Post article from October 29, TFA President Chonladet Khemarattana said that given the rapid growth of e-commerce, mobile payments, and digital currencies in Thailand, international cooperation is necessary to promote local financial technology. Additionally, he stated that 20% of the world’s cryptocurrency holders reside in Thailand, which was ranked ninth in the 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index released in September by analytics company Chainalysis and cryptocurrency payments business TripleA.
The Hungarian Blockchain Coalition was established in March 2022 in collaboration with the Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Hungary, while the Thai Fintech Association was established as a nonprofit organisation in 2016 with the aim of representing the local financial technology sector, including cryptocurrency exchanges.
The agreement was made in September, when the central bank of Thailand and a couple of its commercial banks participated in a distributed ledger cross-border wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) transaction platform testing project.
Additionally, the Bank of Thailand announced in August that it planned to start a pilot programme for a retail CBDC by the end of 2022 on a modest scale in the private sector with roughly 10,000 customers. To test the digital money, “cash-like acts” like making purchases of goods or services would be employed.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand has also imposed certain limitations on cryptocurrencies this year, forbidding the use of cryptocurrencies as payment methods in March on the grounds that they “may disrupt the stability of the financial system”. The SEC intends to prevent cryptocurrency exchanges from offering or supporting services for digital asset depository, while the authority is also cracking down on crypto lending sites.
It seems that Hungary has a stringent stance on cryptocurrencies as well. The governor of the Hungarian National Bank, György Matolcsy, demanded in February that all cryptocurrency trading and mining be outlawed throughout the European Union since it “serviced unlawful activity” and was “speculative”.
