Indonesian Government to Launch Crypto Bourse This Year, Official Says – Exchanges Bitcoin News

The Indone­sian gov­ern­ment is set to launch a cryp­to bourse by the end of this year, a high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cial report­ed­ly revealed. “We will make sure that every require­ment, pro­ce­dure, and the nec­es­sary steps have been tak­en,” he emphasized.

Crypto Bourse Coming Soon in Indonesia

The Indone­sian gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to launch a cryp­to bourse by year-end, Deal­stree­ta­sia report­ed Wednes­day, cit­ing Indonesia’s Deputy Trade Min­is­ter Jer­ry Sambuaga.

Speak­ing on the side­lines of NXC Inter­na­tion­al Sum­mit 2022 by WIR Group in Bali, the trade min­is­ter explained that the cryp­to bourse ini­tia­tive is part of the government’s efforts to pro­tect con­sumers amid ris­ing inter­est in dig­i­tal currencies.

Orig­i­nal­ly set to launch in 2021, the bourse launch was post­poned due to the com­plex­i­ty of the process, the pub­li­ca­tion conveyed.

“We will make sure that every require­ment, pro­ce­dure, and the nec­es­sary steps have been tak­en,” Min­is­ter Sam­bua­ga was quot­ed as say­ing. “This is proof that we are being care­ful. We don’t want to be hasty as it may cause us to miss some­thing.” He elaborated:

Cre­at­ing a bourse needs many prepa­ra­tions. We need to see which enti­ties should be includ­ed in the bourse.

“Sec­ond­ly, we need to val­i­date the said enti­ties,” the gov­ern­ment offi­cial con­tin­ued. “Third­ly, there is min­i­mum cap­i­tal and oth­er require­ments relat­ed to cus­to­di­an depos­i­to­ry, tech­ni­cal things.”

Tokocryp­to CEO Pang Xue Kai believes that a cryp­to bourse can help increase the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants in the cryp­to sec­tor and inter­est from insti­tu­tion­al investors. Tokocryp­to is one of the 25 cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchanges licensed by the Indone­sian Com­mod­i­ty Futures Trad­ing Reg­u­la­to­ry Agency (Bappebti).

Pang opined:

The indus­try will grow, we’ll start see­ing more local projects.

Indone­sia allows the trad­ing of cryp­to assets as com­modi­ties but does not rec­og­nize cryp­to as a pay­ment instru­ment. In April, the Indone­sian Direc­torate Gen­er­al of Tax­es said it had set income tax (PPh) on cap­i­tal gains from cryp­to invest­ments and val­ue-added tax (VAT) on cryp­to pur­chas­es at 0.1%.

In Jan­u­ary, Indonesia’s Finan­cial Ser­vices Author­i­ty (OJK) warned that finan­cial firms are not allowed to offer and facil­i­tate sales of cryp­to assets. How­ev­er, the country’s Min­is­ter of Trade Muham­mad Luth­fi said in Sep­tem­ber last year that the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment will not ban cryp­tocur­ren­cies as Chi­na did. Nonethe­less, Indonesia’s top Islam­ic body, the country’s author­i­ty on Shari­ah com­pli­ance, has declared cryp­tocur­ren­cy haram, for­bid­den for Mus­lims under Islam­ic law.

Cryp­to trans­ac­tions in Indone­sia increased 1,224% to 859.4 tril­lion rupi­ahs ($57.5 bil­lion) in 2021 from 64.9 tril­lion in 2020, accord­ing to Bappebti. In the first six months of this year, there were 15.1 mil­lion cryp­to users in Indone­sia, trans­act­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cies worth 212 tril­lion rupiahs.

What do you think about the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment launch­ing a cryp­to bourse? Let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Kevin Helms 

A stu­dent of Aus­tri­an Eco­nom­ics, Kevin found Bit­coin in 2011 and has been an evan­ge­list ever since. His inter­ests lie in Bit­coin secu­ri­ty, open-source sys­tems, net­work effects and the inter­sec­tion between eco­nom­ics and cryptography.

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