Indonesia Plans to Tighten Crypto Regulation Following FTX’s Insolvency

The sudden death of crypto’s white knight forced Indonesia to call for more regulation to protect investors against such shakeouts.

Indonesia plans to give its Financial Services Authority (OJK) the power to regulate cryptocurrency investments and market oversight.  

The country’s Trade Ministry currently polices the digital asset industry in collaboration with the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency. However, Indonesia’s finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, said the country would transfer the authority to OJK to protect consumer interests. 

Indonesia Concerned About Investors’ Assets 

Indonesia’s plans were influenced by the latest events in the industry that saw the fall of FTX, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world. The incident resulted in another bloodbath after Terra’s crash in May, erasing billions of dollars from the market. 

According to reports, the new plan proposed by Indrawati is part of broader legislation submitted to the government earlier this year. The country’s parliament is currently debating the bill. 

The finance minister told parliament that Indonesia needs to provide strict regulations to safeguard its entire financial sector technology innovation, including crypto assets. 

“We need to build a mechanism of supervision and investor protection that is quite strong and reliable, especially for investment instruments that are high risk,” Indrawati said at a Thursday parliamentary hearing.

She further noted that the crypto industry has suffered “turbulence recently,” referring to the FTX saga, which started last week after leaked Alameda documents showed massive illiquid exposures to some altcoins, including SOL and FTT. 

Indonesian Investors Choose Crypto Over Stock

While cryptocurrencies are yet to be recognized as legal tender in Indonesia, the country allows the assets to be used in the commodity market for investment purposes. 

While addressing parliament on the new plan, Indrawati noted that the number of crypto investors in Indonesia supersedes that of the stock market. 

As of June, the country recorded approximately 15.1 million investors engaging with digital assets compared to 9.1 million investors in the traditional stock market. In 2020, Indonesia only had four million crypto investors, showing a tremendous increase within the last two years.

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