Taiwan Rejects Bitcoin ATMs

January 8, 2014 Leave a comment

Jan 6, 2014

Taiwan Rejects Bitcoin ATMs

Taiwan is joining the ranks of governments wary to join in on the craze that is the virtual currency bitcoin. The island’s financial regulator said Monday that physical teller machines for the virtual currency “will not appear” here, after Las Vegas-based RoboCoin, which makes bitcoin ATMs, reportedly said it had chosen Taiwan and Hong Kong as its first spots to expand in Asia.

“Bitcoin is not a legal tender. Banks should not accept savings in bitcoins and the FSC will not allow the installation of bitcoin ATMs in Taiwan,” Tseng Ming-chung, chairman of Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission, told The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

RoboCoin couldn’t be reached for comment Monday during Asian daytime hours.

RoboCoin launched its first bitcoin ATM in a Vancouver coffee shop in November, where it racked up 1 million Canadian dollars (US$941,500) in transactions in less than a month. ATM users can either buy or sell bitcoin through the machines.

Taiwan is not alone in dodging the newfangled bitcoin frenzy. Governments and banks around the world are worried that the absence of scrutiny over bitcoin—which isn’t issued or backed by a central government but is created through a sophisticated computer process—could be a hotbed for money laundering or other illegal activities.

China’s central bank last month asked some domestic payment processors to stop trading with the country’s biggest bitcoin exchange, BTC China. The move sent the virtual currency’s value plunging by as much as 38% against the dollar at the time. The People’s Bank of China also said financial institutions shouldn’t take deposits from bitcoin-related businesses or provide them insurance or custody services, though it said individuals could continue to buy and sell bitcoin.

Hong Kong’s finance chief John Tsang warned in December that the bitcoin run couldn’t last forever because there was “no support from the real economy,” but the city’s Monetary Authority has reportedly said it won’t regulate the bitcoin ATMs.

According to Mt.Gox, an online bitcoin exchange, the virtual currency is currently trading at $1,049. The currency started 2013 at less than $20 and crossed the $1,000 threshold in November before plunging to $640 after BTC China stopping taking deposits.

Taiwan’s FSC said that usage of bitcoin on the island is “minimal,” with only a handful of online game providers accepting the currency. Wayi International Digital Entertainment Co., a Taiwanese online game provider, hassaid it intends to accept bitcoin and may even become an exchange.

“If bitcoins do expand into the local market, we will then consider launching more measures to strengthen our supervision,” Mr. Tseng said.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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