stable coins

Story: CZ Backs ASEAN Crypto Passporting as 10-Nation Licensing Maze Drains Compliance Budgets

By Evie Vavasseur

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What Passporting Actually Means Here. The word "passporting" sounds technical, but the mechanics aren't complicated.

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The EU Model Hovering in the Background. He's not the only one pointing at Europe. The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation — MiCA —…

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Why the Fragmentation Hurts. Right now, the fragmentation costs real money. A company building a regional crypto or stablecoin…

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Changpeng Zhao wants ASEAN to stop making crypto companies file fresh license applications in every single market.

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Zhao threw his weight behind a proposal from Lito Villanueva of FinTech Alliance PH. The idea is pretty straightforward: if a crypto firm is already licensed and operating…

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The word "passporting" sounds technical, but the mechanics aren't complicated. A firm regulated in, say, Singapore notifies its home regulator that it wants to expand into…

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ASEAN doesn't have that right now. Not for crypto, anyway. Each member state runs its own digital asset rulebook, which means a company trying to operate across five or six ASEAN…

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What's interesting is that ASEAN has already proven it can build these kinds of cross-border arrangements in other financial areas.

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Zhao's pitch is basically: you've done this before, do it again, but for digital assets.

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Related: HashKey Merges 4 Regional Exchanges Into One App for Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Middle East

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He's not the only one pointing at Europe. The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation — MiCA — gives authorized crypto entities the ability to offer services across member…

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Zhao sees something like that as a possible model for ASEAN. The bloc is obviously different — ten countries, wildly different income levels, different legal traditions,…

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Whether ASEAN regulators are ready to move on it is unclear. The proposal is still a discussion, not a policy.

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Right now, the fragmentation costs real money. A company building a regional crypto or stablecoin operation across ASEAN has to run parallel compliance programs in each…

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Zhao's argument is that more competition is good for consumers. Easier cross-border operations bring more firms into each market.

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