Capital Requirement For Crypto-Based Instruments Trading Raised in Indonesia

By Swati Kishore

Digital currency traders in the country of Indonesia are unhappy after the news of the requirement of USD 70 million for the launch of futures trading broke out.

As per news reports published on February 14, 2019, by the local media outlet Jakarta Post, Bitcoin brokers will now need to have over USD 70 million to launch futures trading.

Some of the new regulations, which materialised in October 2018, ensured that any trading platform that wishes to provide crypto-based instruments can do the same, however, the use of digital currencies in the Southeast Asian nation is strictly prohibited.

The final bill has now received an amendment which requires trading platforms to have the minimum capital of USD 71.17 million or 1 trillion rupiah.

It is interesting to note that the capital required to begin trading traditional commodities is much less at USD 178,000. Hence, the decision of imposing exponentially higher minimum capital requirement for crypto-instruments trading has received much flak from the crypto proponents in the nation.

The amendment in the bill was made last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency or Bappebti.

The Chief Executive Officer of Indodax, an Indonesia-based digital currency exchange, has said that the minimum capital requirement trumps the money required to open a rural bank.

Oscar Darmawan said that these regulations are acting as a suppressant to the growth of the cryptocurrency industry in the nation. Darmawan explained that no futures have been launched ever since the legalization of the tool.

Indonesia has recently taken a conservative stance against the use of digital assets in the nation.

The country’s financial regulatory body, called Indonesia Financial Services Authority, in June 2018 had given a go-ahead to the trading of cryptocurrencies as a commodity on the national stock exchange.

Weeks before Bitcoin had hit the all-time high of USD 20,000 in December 2017, a full Block on Bitcoin use for payments had arrived from the central bank, called Bank Indonesia.