The Bank of Thailand launched the world’s first blockchain-based government savings bond issuance platform using IBM’s blockchain technology. Within two weeks of the launch, the central bank sold more than $1.6 billion worth of savings bonds, as per IBM’s official announcement on Oct. 5, 2020. The use of blockchain technology is said to have reduced the bond issuance time from 15 days to just two days. The increased efficiency of the process has also reduced operational cost and redundant validation of documents involved in bond issuance. IBM along with the central bank collaborated with seven other institutions including Public Debt …

Blockchain firm ConsenSys announced Sep. 25 that it had been awarded the contract for a cross-border payment project between Thailand and Hong Kong. The company will lead the second implementation phase of Project Ithanon-Lionrock. The project is a joint initiative to create a cross-border central bank digital currency, or CBDC, payment network between banks in the two countries. Initiated in May 2019 by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, or HKMA, and the Bank of Thailand, or BOT, the project announced the results of its initial research phase back in January. This found that there was significant potential to use DLT …

Blockchain-enabled approaches to advancing the transition to renewable energy sources are making inroads in new regions. On Aug. 25, Australian blockchain firm Power Ledger announced its forthcoming launch of a marketplace for trading renewable energy certificates (RECs) across Thailand and the Southeast Asian region. The project builds on Power Ledger’s long-standing collaboration with Thai renewable energy firm BCPG. Their earliest joint project dates back to 2018, when they conducted a peer-to-peer renewable energy trading trial in one of Bangkok’s central precincts. Since then, Power Ledger has worked together with BCPG and the Thai Digital Energy Development (TDED) on developing a …

Thailand’s central bank is looking at smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi) implementations for its national digital currency, the digital baht. Vijak Sethaput, senior developer for the Bank of Thailand’s (BoT) central bank digital currency project Inthanon, discussed the country’s CBDC progress in an interview hosted by a global think tank for central banking, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, on Aug. 13. Sethaput was joined by Sky Guo, CEO of New York-based enterprise blockchain firm Cypherium, which is focused on global CBDC implementations and interoperability. In the interview, Guo said that global jurisdictions can borrow from the DeFi …

After a series of regulatory changes led the South Korean exchange UpBit to force out its foreign users from the platform, the company is setting up a new division in Thailand. According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, UpBit has received approval from Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission to operate its digital asset exchange in the country. The Thai SEC has approved the exchange for four provisional licenses that allow the company to operate under four categories namely cryptocurrency exchange, digital token exchange, cryptocurrency broker, and digital token broker. UpBit claims that it is the first-ever digital asset business to …

Thailand’s central bank has reportedly entered a new phase in the development of its central bank digital currency, or CBDC. The Bank of Thailand, or BOT, has reportedly deployed its CBDC, and has been using the digital currency for financial transactions with some large businesses, local English-language newspaper The Nation reports July 16. Thailand to roll out CBDC testing with the Hong Kong’s central bank in September The bank has entered the third phase in development of the digital baht and plans to expand to more businesses, BOT assistant governor, Vachira Arromdee, reportedly announced on Wednesday. According to the report, …

Thai authorities are ramping up their efforts to crack down on the country’s drug networks and the ruses they use to launder their multi-million dollar turnovers — including cryptocurrency. AFP News reported on June 26 that the recent downfall of one meth syndicate — itself allegedly responsible for laundering tens of millions of dollars of narco profits via gold dealers, oil and the construction industry — has cast a spotlight on the "scale and sophistication” of such networks. Lieutenant-General Wissanu Prasarttong-Osoth — assistant to Thailand's police chief — has conceded “it's impossible to guess the real amount these drug networks …

The Bank of Thailand announced that it plans to develop a prototype to test real-life business use cases of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). The bank said in its official statement that before it launches the CBDC payment system for all businesses, it plans to test it with large-scale enterprises. They have partnered with the largest cement and building material provider in Thailand, Siam Cement Group (SCG), and Thailand-based fintech firm Digital Ventures Company Limited to pilot test their payment prototype system. The project is scheduled to start in July 2020 and the pilot test with SCG is expected …

Australian firm Power Ledger announced a partnership with Thai Digital Energy Development (TDED) on May 25 to create a blockchain-based digital energy platform in the country. The platform will enable environmental commodity and peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading, in order to accelerate adoption of renewable energy sources. Thailand aims to generate 25% of its electricity from renewables by the year 2037. Public/private partnership to promote green energy use Power Ledger’s blockchain-based transactive energy solutions include peer-to-peer energy trading and virtual power plants, along with trading in carbon credits and renewable energy certificates (REC). TDED is a joint public/private sector venture between …

Digital money transfer service, Azimo, has partnered with Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), the oldest bank in Thailand, to launch an instant cross-border payments service from Europe to Thailand through Ripple’s global payments network, RippleNet. According to an announcement on April 9, the solution aims to solve the challenges of expensive and unreliable global payments. They state that through their platform, remittances from Europe to Thailand will take less than a minute to complete. Instant cross-border payments via RippleNet Historically, remittances between Europe and Thailand often take more than one whole business day to settle. Azimo on the other hand can …

Thai fintech DeeMoney has deepened its integration with blockchain-based financial services network RippleNet, further consolidating Ripple’s presence in Asia. As the first non-bank institution in Thailand to sign on to RippleNet, DeeMoney already processes inbound transfers using the blockchain network along remittance corridors in the Middle East and Gulf Regions, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Israel. On March 18, Ripple and DeeMoney announced the second phase of their partnership to widen these services to support outbound remittances from Thailand to destination countries. A major remittances market The value of remittances in Thailand is forecast to break the $1 billion mark …

The advance of coronavirus in the region hasn’t precluded the launch of Huobi Thailand, which allows for a fiat gateway to BTC, ETH, HT, and USDT from the start, and plans to expand the offering in the near future according to the company’s press release Cointelegraph received today, March 5. Licensing Last year, Huobi was awarded a “Digital Asset License” by Thailand’s Ministry of Finance, and more recently it was cleared by the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission. According to Ciara Sun, VP of Global Business at Huobi Group, Huobi’s goal is “to help create an equitable world where wealth …