As a Singapore resident and the person who is active in the SEA region crypto space. It's natural for me to cover some of the news and the compliance cases of the SEA region exchanges. So today for this particular post, I wish to cover the Zipmex exchange case.
Zipmex is an exchange operating in SEA region. And it does everything that binance does. Mostly it is focused on the Singapore region as they have SGD as the prime currency working inside the exchange. And they seem to be also expanding in the SEA region for now. However their US and Thai involvement has caused them compliance issues.
So this post is about the various issues that Zipmex is facing with the compliance and how they are being conflicting with the regulatories in some places.
Thailand SEC Compliance Issue
As I explained here earlier, every nation has it's own compliance. And every foreign exchange that comes in the soil to work with native. They have to go through the compliance. And they also have to deal with the SEC of respective nation. You can't expect homeland rules to apply to the foreign lands. And so the regulatory changes happen on regular basis.
In case of thailand, they have their own structural rules. And they do most of the compliance which are specific to crypto through certain SEC process. Zipmex had the issues with the process for which they were given the 15 day deadline and if they don't comply trading was meant to be ceased. And that's what happened, Thailand SEC has stopped their trading operations.
You can read about the update here
Singapore High Court's Restructuring of Zipmex
Singapore has an authority body that does the monitoring and the compliance. And when the company was expanding into the nations outside the singapore, it is meant to create new companies in each respective nations. Court here has a rule that they have to give the nod for the restructuring in each new nation with respective new companies. And they have done the green signal for that.
You can find the restructuring of the Zipmex and the moratorium update of the zipmex's variety of compliance. You can read about it here. So the new update makes the restructuring of the company possible. But the rule for each nation for the compliance remains there. In that context you should take a look at the compliance and the regulations with the thailand and indonesia in upcoming times.
Asset Withdrawal Notice of Zipmex
As the Thailand SEC has asked the company to stop trading. And then allow the users to withdraw from the trading terminal. The asset withdrawal notice of the Zipmex is going to hurt a lot of traders and the users of the exchange who are working in the p2p space. So the notice for the withdrawal extension is posted officially here.
March 1 2024 is the date when the zipmex would stop the incoming and the outgoing transactions. This means the compliance is in effect and also the Singapore's exchange would be facing variety of further issues through court and the compliance before they can go back online, which is kind of difficult for them in upcoming times.
Zipmex was a good exchange, but compliance and the market lobby is a thing. And often the govt and the court ends up removing some of the exchange from the industry for those gains. Let's see if the Zipmex makes a comeback or stays buried.