Asia Financial News

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will expand its services in Australia, launching a local entity and an updated suite of services for retail crypto traders, hinting that institutional products are soon to follow.

Anchorage Digital co-founder and president Diogo Mónica believe there is immense opportunity in Asia’s institutional investors, with the digital asset infrastructure provider on Oct. 5 announcing a “major expansion” of its platform into the region. 

In this week’s newsletter, read about how UNICEF is using nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to help connect schools to the internet and how post offices are able to revive the philately sector through NFTs. Check out how an NFT gaming project lets many aspects of its game be customizable and sold as NFT packs. In other news, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu spoke with Cointelegraph and shared his thoughts about Asia’s perception of NFTs. And, don’t forget this week’s Nifty News featuring Walmart’s entry to the Metaverse. 

A multi-jurisdictional Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot has been marked “successful” by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) after a month-long test phase that facilitated $22 million worth of real-value cross-border transactions.

The Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam now ranks among the top nations adopting cryptocurrencies. Indeed, the country has ranked first on Chainalysis’ Global Crypto Adoption Index for two years in a row.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the biggest on-ramp to the cryptocurrency market among countries in Central & South Asia and Oceania (CSOA) according to a new report. 

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) may be the biggest driver of crypto adoption in Central, Southern Asia, and Oceania (CSAO), a new report has found. 

Half a year after the military junta in Myanmar revealed its plans to launch a digital currency, the country’s government, ousted in a coup in 2021, voices its own intention to launch one using frozen national funds. 

 

Cryptocurrency companies have been moving to improve compliance worldwide amid the bear market of 2022, with many platforms increasingly securing licenses and approvals. 

International Monetary Fund (IMF) observed in a blog post and flagged the attendant risks. It said that in the past few years Asian countries led by India, Vietnam and Thailand witnessed a steep rise in crypto ownership, leading to a scenario where the correlation between equity market performance and crypto asset performance had increased, «This indicates a growing interconnectedness between the two asset classes that permits the transmission of shocks that can impact financial markets,» said the blogpost authored by Nada Choueiri, mission chief for India at the IMF, and her colleagues. «Accordingly, authorities in Asia are increasingly sensitive to the rising risks posed by crypto as adoption continues to spread. They have therefore dialled up their focus on crypto regulation.» According to the post, volatility correlations between Indian equities and crypto assets have increased threefold since the pandemic, suggesting a possible spillover of risk sentiment between the two asset classes. Therefore, any negative sentiment in crypto markets now has more impact on investor sentiment in equity markets and vice-versa.

The Securities Commission (SC) of Malaysia issued a statement on Monday regarding Huobi's operations in the country. According to the statement, the crypto exchange is now on the SC’s Investor Alert List. 

After the rising wedge formation was broken on Aug. 17, the total crypto market capitalization quickly dropped to $1 trillion and the bulls' dream of recouping the $1.2 trillion support, last seen on June 10, became even more distant. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia there was a strong division between the crypto and financial markets in general. Now, that border has got thinner and the situation demands additional regulatory measures, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes. 

The government of Uzbekistan, which has previously made significant steps toward a moderate approach to crypto, announced Wednesday that it has restricted access to a number of large international crypto exchanges due to accusations of unlicensed activity. 

Two organizations have established a new partnership in their quest to establish an even bigger presence across South East Asia.

Com2uS, the mobile game developer, wants to create its own version of Web3, “where it is free to play and own.” This is according to the company’s president Kyu Lee, who spoke at Korea Blockchain Week 2022 in Seoul, revealing the plan to launch a new blockchain. 

Decentralized-finance (DeFi) aggregator 1inch Network has revealed plans to expand within the Asian market, according to its co-founder Sergej Kunz.

The ongoing market downturn has not discouraged professionals from taking payment in cryptoassets, as indicated by the latest report released by global payroll specialist Deel. 

On July 11, the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, signed new tax rates for crypto mining operators into law. While these amendments reflect the country’s growing frustration with the undertaxed and non-transparent usage of the national power grid by both foreign investors and domestic perpetrators, the new taxes could hardly be called excluding. 

Although the concept of the metaverse is still nascent, it is the Americans who are the most likely to write the rules in the space - as they're the leaders in terms of fundraising, suggests a recent report by Max Shannon, Digital Asset Analyst at the crypto investment and research firm CoinShares.