Thailand’s Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is preparing a digital bond trading system, according to the Bangkok Post. However, this will require legislation to support electronic securities and the online purchase of debentures, so the time frame is not clear.
One of the aims is to streamline the issuance of bonds which still involve manual processes and to reduce delays between issuance and the ability to trade newly issued bonds.
The ultimate goal is to digitize the entire process including investor registration, trading and settlement using DLT. It’s expected that there could be multiple blockchains and the government will also provide a shared ledger with which they can interoperate based on shared standards.
“In the future, there may be multiple chains for trade. Trading through DLT on all systems is connected by a share ledger, which is expected to be completed soon,” said Jomkwan Kongsakul, deputy secretary-general of the SEC.
“There will be two types of securities issuance, including products that start trading as digital-native products born from DLT, which are electronic securities.” Additionally, it will be possible to trade traditional securities where a tokenized digital twin has been created.
The hope is that by supporting fractional trading, it will attract a wider pool of investors and hence improve liquidity.
Last year the regulator launched its Digital Asset Sandbox. In Thailand the SEC is responsible for overseeing all digital assets, which it groups into cryptocurrencies and digital tokens. The latter includes investments that provide rights in a project versus utility tokens.
Separately, last week it was clarified that a planned crypto sandbox for payments on the island of Phuket is in fact for stablecoins backed by government bonds.
