Luno Malaysia Sdn Bhd has gotten conditional approval from the Securities Commission (SC) of Malaysia as a Recognised Market Operator (Digital Asset Exchange). Once they have satisfied SC’s conditions, Luno will be one of only three digital asset exchanges to be regulated in Malaysia, allowing investors to buy, sell and store cryptocurrency.
According to David Low, the General Manager of Luno Southeast Asia: “We are extremely grateful to the Securities Commission for granting us conditional approval. It has been a long journey for Luno, from our entry into the Malaysian market in 2015, which led to us becoming, in just two years, the largest digital asset exchange in the country. We are committed to working with financial authorities so it is very important to us that we are now going to be regulated by the Securities Commission. We look forward to relaunching the Luno services so they are again available to all Malaysians.”
He added that Luno has been working closely with regulators and banks to complete the groundwork for buying, selling and storing of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, which they believe are the future of money. The regulation will provide customers with clarity and protection, and it will ensure that all cryptocurrency businesses have adequate standards in place to protect investors and their funds. Luno says they are committed to compliance as demonstrated by their continued registration with, and institutional reporting through Bank Negara Malaysia.
Luno acknowledged there is a lot of demand for their service and they are coordinating with their partners in Malaysia to get Luno back and operating as quickly as possible. They added that they are almost ready to accept new customers and to enable them to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies on their platform. Mr. Low added that Luno will be implementing some exciting new changes which they have been working on during the transition period, which will further enhance the Luno service.
At the moment, Luno offers trading for both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The company is headquartered in London with regional hubs located in Singapore and Cape Town. Luno currently has over 250 employees with close to 3 million opened wallets across over 40 countries.
The other two digital asset exchanges that are recognised by the SC are SINEGY Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd and Tokenize Technology (M) Sdn Bhd. As announced earlier this year by Finance Minister, Lim Guan Eng, any individual offering an initial coin offering (ICO) or operating a digital asset exchange without SC’s approval may be punished, on conviction, with imprisonment not exceeding 10 years and fine not exceeding RM10 million.
You can learn more about the conditional approval announcement from Luno’s blog post.
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