The Indonesian government is set to launch a crypto bourse by the end of 2022 as part of efforts to protect consumers amid rising interests in digital currencies, said a senior executive on Wednesday.
The authority had initially targeted launching the bourse in 2021 but then postponed it to the first quarter of 2022 before leaving the plan in limbo due to the complexity of the process.
“We will make sure that every requirement, procedure, and the necessary steps have been taken,” said Indonesia’s deputy trade minister Jerry Sambuaga, noting that the delay cannot be attributed to any significant problem.
“This is proof that we are being careful. We don’t want to be hasty as it may cause us to miss something. 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. Thirdly, there is minimum capital and other requirements related to custodian depository, technical things,” he said on the sidelines of NXC International Summit 2022 by WIR Group in Bali.
Pang Xue Kai, CEO of Tokocrypto said separately that a bourse can be a catalyst for the whole Indonesian crypto ecosystem which leads to more participants, more communities, and interest from institutional investors.
“The industry will grow, we’ll start seeing more local projects,” he told reporters at the same event.
Tokocrypto is among the 25 crypto exchanges that have been granted licences by the Indonesian Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, known as Bappebti, to trade crypto assets. Indonesia does not recognise cryptocurrency as a payment instrument but only as a trading commodity.
Indonesia’s listed tech group GoTo recently acquired a crypto exchange PT Kripto Maksima Koin as part of efforts to be a “diverse money management hub”.
According to Bappebti, crypto asset transactions in the country reached 859.4 trillion rupiah in 2021, up 1,224% from 64.9 trillion in 2020. Transactions in January-June 2022 amounted to 212 trillion rupiah with crypto consumers up to June 2022 reaching 15.1 million users.