The crypto community wrapped up the year 2019 with a bit of good cryptocurrency news from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As usual, the agency released its country report for the just concluded year, 2019, dubbed “Technical Assistance Report – Monetary and Financial Statistics Mission.” Only this time, the paper was focused on the Philippines’ impact on the global crypto industry and vice versa.
“The Philippines may become an important market for crypto assets,” says the IMF in the report.
In the in-depth report, the IMF critically analyzed the relationship of the Philippines with the crypto sphere, leading to the conclusion that it could become an important market for crypto assets and other online financial technology developments.
In its analysis, the IMF noted that the important role Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) play in the Filipino market and urged the BSP to leverage its position to help study the virtual internet-based market.
So far, the BSP acts as the respected authority, controlling the affairs of authorized crypto exchanges tagged Virtual Currency Exchanges (VCE). The BSP has already given the green light to 13 VCEs so far. A close look at the transactions and flow of cryptocurrencies would help the IMF understand the virtual market better.
Hence the IMF, in its report, urges the BSP to “start exploring the possibility of collecting data on these exchanges for macroeconomic analysis, in particular, international financial flows using cryptoassets.”
For easy tracking and to minimize errors too, the report also advised the BSP to take up a new stand that requires these VCEs to submit aggregated data on gross transactions on a quarterly basis.
Some of the relevant info expected to be contained in the aggregated data include a clear indication of the country of origin and destination of funds transacted and a breakdown of the parties involved in such transactions whether it is between individuals, non-financial corporations or financial corporations.
Why Crypto in the Philippines?
Prior to the commercialization of cryptocurrencies, the Philippines has always accounted for a substantial fraction of yearly remittances. This includes both money leaving the country and, primarily, money sent to loved ones back in the country from abroad.
With crypto going mainstream, it seems like the Philippines found a safer and cheaper way to send and transfer money in and out of the country. This caused a huge turn from the traditional payment processing system to cryptocurrencies. The biggest cryptocurrency in the remittance game is probably XRP that enjoyed a huge boost over the passing year.
Therefore, I am not really surprised that the country could become a key player to the global crypto market.
