An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Lystra Lu­cil­lio, “cryp­tocur­ren­cy” re­form is need­ed to al­low for in­vestor pro­tec­tion where cryp­to as­sets were con­sid­ered as se­cu­ri­ties.

Lu­cil­lio made the com­ment dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion en­ti­tled “Con­sid­er­a­tions in Cryp­to As­set Reg­u­la­tion” was held by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the TTSEC at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um on Tues­day.

“So what is the TTSEC do­ing?.. Well, first we have to un­der­stand what is go­ing on with­in our sphere. So you will see com­ing up we will be launch­ing some sur­veys as we want to get feed­back from the pub­lic con­cern­ing if cryp­to as­sets act­ing like sub­sti­tutes for some of the se­cu­ri­ties the reg­u­lat­ed se­cu­ri­ties that we al­ready have. Is it that per­sons are start­ing to take more of their in­vest­ments funds and in­vest­ing in these things?” she asked.

Lu­cil­lio in­di­cat­ed that TTSEC as a reg­u­la­tor would be launch­ing an im­pact as­sess­ment dur­ing which the in­sti­tu­tion is go­ing to try to de­cide if there is a prob­lem.

“What is the prob­lem? What are the risks in­volved? What are the pros and cons of it? Al­so we will have to in­clude the whole as­pect of AML­CFT (An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing and Com­bat­ing the Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism) and the FATF (Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force) rec­om­men­da­tions,” she dis­closed.

She added that by the sec­ond quar­ter of next year, the TTSEC in­tends to de­vel­op the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

Al­so speak­ing at the pan­el dis­cus­sion was Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hi­laire said that the Bank and much of the wider pub­lic are still very much learn­ing about the cryp­tocur­ren­cy and as such any de­ci­sion con­cern­ing reg­u­la­tion must be craft­ed in a way to al­low growth.

The cen­tral bank gov­er­nor said one must un­der­stand how cryp­tocur­ren­cy op­er­ates.

“If you do not have clar­i­ty, you will not be able to move for­ward, you will not be able to pro­mote the in­dus­try while hav­ing good in­vestor pro­tec­tion. We need to do that very quick­ly,” he men­tioned.

“We al­so have a lot of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence that we can draw on, so the time is now we think we should move very quick­ly to pro­mote pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and to deal with this thing be­cause in our view in­ac­tion is not an op­tion,” Hi­lar­ie said.