Malaysia’s Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (K-KOMM) is reportedly batting for crypto and NFT legalization in the state. As per local news agency Harian Metro, the ministry’s Deputy Minister, Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin has urged Malaysia’s regulators to legalize cryptos and NFTs.
Abidin pointed out that doing so would significantly support young people. More so, because the crypto industry is becoming increasingly popular among the youth. Per the same report, the minister also said that his party would look into ways to increase the participation of young people who use digital currencies.
“We hope the government can and try to ‘legalize’ this matter so that we can expand the participation of young people in cryptocurrencies and help them in terms of energy consumption and so on.”
The decision on crypto regulation would have to be taken by Malaysia’s financial regulators, including the central bank and the Securities Commission Malaysia. The minister’s comments reflected the same. Nonetheless, he went on to add,
“However, we in the ministry want to register, because this is the business and financial program of the future, especially for young people now.“
While the translated version of Harian Metro’s report only pointed towards the legalization of digital assets, a few from the community have pointed out that Abidin has proposed adopting cryptocurrency as legal tender. Quoting The Star’s report, Three Arrows Capital’s Zhu Su was one such person to do so.
In fact, Bloomberg’s report too was inclined towards the ‘legal tender’ narrative than the mere ‘legalization’ narrative.
Ministry of Finance is not on the same crypto page
Here it should be noted that Malaysia’s Deputy Finance Minister recently said that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, aren’t suitable as a means of payment. He was also quoted saying,
“In general, digital assets are not a store of value and a good medium of exchange. This is due to the state of digital assets which is exposed to volatility as a result of speculative investments.”
Given the fact that the Deputy Ministers of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Comms are on completely different pages, it would be interesting to see how other top regulators react to Abidin’s request.