Officials of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said cryptocurrency is not illegal in the country, but regulations only cover remittances or money changing businesses and not direct issuance as practiced by some groups into investment schemes.
BSP General Counsel and Senior Assistant Governor Elmore Capule said the bank only allows transactions of cryptocurrency through money changer which are duly authorized, while Financial Supervision Sector Managing Director, Arifa A. Ala also added that “if the business of cryptocurrency is about remittance or similar to remittance business, we register them.”
Capule said BSP does not regulate the buying and selling of the currency since there’s no existing law that grants them authority to issue a license when someone applies in the Philippines.
“We have to do it one step at a time, if you look at the cryptocurrency, actually worldwide, their issue is what is the value? You cannot see the underlying value, essentially it’s just speculation, the price can go up and down within a day so what’s our control on that?” Capule said.
“However, knowing that and knowing really well that this is a worldwide phenomenon we cannot just ignore it, it is there but we have to study how,” he continued.
Capule advised the public to understand first the product before investing on it as it is very basic to ask for its business model as those behind its proliferation only use the word cryptocurrency to make it “sound high-tech but in reality it’s only some kind of pyramiding. “
