The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has registered three new crypto exchanges mainly Luno Malaysia, Synergy Technologies, and Tokenize Technology, as per the press release on June 4.
The three recognized market operators have been given three months to meet with all the supreme court's regulatory requirements before getting a full license to operate as crypto exchanges.
Luno said in a statement to Cointelegraph that these three are the only ones which are registered digital asset exchanges to operate in Malaysia. Luno General Manager of Southeast Asia David Low stated:
“We’ve been working closely with regulators and banks to complete the groundwork for the buying, selling and storing of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, which we believe are the future of money. Regulation will ultimately bring clarity and protection to consumers, and will ensure that all cryptocurrency businesses have adequate standards in place to protect investors and their funds.”
The announcement came into effect just after Malaysia put into the full force of its Capital Markets and Services (Prescription of Securities) (Digital Currency and Digital Token) Order 2019 last January 15, pursued shortly by its revised Guidelines on Recognized Markets on May 31.
According to the service order introduced on January 15, cryptocurrencies are classified as securities, i.e. they simply fall under the Supreme Court's legal preview.
At the same time, Supreme Court published two papers addressed to the public with the main purpose of getting feedback on proposed initial coin offerings (ICO) regulations.
In short, Malaysia needs all the Cryptocurrencies and digital assets to be approved by the SC before it can be traded on any exchanges. Before a month, Fintech news stated that the SC cracked down the unregistered crypto exchanges, ordering them to shut down all their services and return the funds and exchanges obtained from investors.
In Canada, the Canadian Securities Administrators and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada issued papers for public feedback for intended crypto exchanges. These papers collected heavy disagreement and criticism from a popular Canada-based exchange Kraken.
The exchanges main claim was that neither cryptocurrencies nor the agreements between exchanges and users constituted securities at all.