Vietnam To Review Cryptocurrency Regulation In Wake Of Multi-Million Dollar Fraud

Reports have surfaced from Vietnam this week that put Vietnam in line as the next country to enhance regulations on cryptocurrency trading within their borders. Recently, India made their position and stance on cryptocurrencies very clear to the rest of the world and of course, China have recently been hitting headlines with their plans to crack down on Cryptocurrency use. Now it seems that Vietnam will be the next to follow suit, after reports that discuss the occurrence of an $865million fraud taking place in the country. In the wake of the fraud, the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Xuan Phuc released a statement on Wednesday stating that they will establish a new directive to “strengthen the management of activities related to cryptocurrencies”. According to Vietnamese state media, the fraud came about through Vietnamese company Modern Tech JSC, who have allegedly scammed $864.37million out of customers who have purchased iFan and Pincoin cryptocurrencies. The scam involved the promise of interest payments from the company to their customers, yet nobody actually saw any of the payments, causing huge losses of finance for many innocent Vietnamese people. At the moment, Vietnam does carry laws that prevent citizens from paying for things with cryptocurrency where they are not recognised as legal tender. However, the possession of cryptocurrency-based assets is not illegal. New regulations could see an end to this, with the government clearly set on making sure fraud on this scale can never happen again. Overall, this is just another spanner in the works for the blockchain revolution in the east, giving another country the ammunition to really clamp down on what should be a thriving and successful industry. The decision by some individuals to commit atrocious fraud does sadly have a devastating impact on the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. We need to see what sort of regulation Vietnam wish to establish now, whilst at the moment they may seem on the fence, there is a chance that they could follow India and China in becoming a sturdy figure against cryptocurrency, or alternatively, as we saw in Japan, maybe the huge fraud will just encourage the government to tighten up on the exchanges and leave the customers to trade freely? Featured Image Original Source: Flickr - Great Photo By Mattjkelley