Medalla: crypto trading is akin to gambling B VG C @villygc
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ACTAN, Cebu—Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Felipe M. Medalla said the use of cryptocurrency, mainly by younger people, is akin to gambling due to the huge losses they incur when trading their digital assets. He said that while it may be argued that this is their personal problem because this is their own money, regulation becomes stricter when crypto currency meets the banking. “The point where the crypto gets changed into pesos or bank accounts—that’s the time where all regulations come in. As you know, whether it’s crypto or regular banking, the entire world is afraid that cross-
border movements of money could be financing things that are quite destructive,” Medalla said in a news conference after the meeting of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) regional consultative group for Asia. “Indeed, our big problem is the Philippines is in the gray list, which has possible consequences. We have had a moratorium of issuances of what we call VASP, Virtual Assets Service Provider—these are the things we want to address,” Medalla said. The BSP recognizes that virtual asset systems have the potential to revolutionize the delivery of financial services by providing faster and more economical means of moving funds, both domestic and international, and may further support financial inclusion.
In its circular passed in 2021, BSP said it believes these benefits, however, should be considered along with the risks in virtual assets, considering the higher degree of anonymity involved, the velocity of transactions, volatility of prices and global accessibility. Medalla said he personally does not think protecting the investor is the main concern of regulation of the virtual assets by the central bank. “If you’re willing to gamble your own money, it’s your loss. Although I have heard of anecdotes of young people almost committing suicide because they lost a lot. From my point of view, that’s the state of play that those things are not,” he said. “Crypto for the Philippines is not a financial stability issue because it
doesn’t involve too many people in that aspect, but it is an issue that may call the attention of the government one way or another,” he said. Klaas Knot, chairman of the FSB, said the board is working to deliver a set of high-level recommendations on the regulation of stable coins and other crypto assets during its July G-20 meeting. “They are moving as fast as they can as well because the industry is very rapidly moving, so the quicker we can get it done, the better it is,” Knot said. “But we try to make that lag [of one year] as short as possible given the rapid developments and as early as 2024, and in some jurisdictions, for instance, there is already a regu-
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Thursday, May 18, 2023 Vol. 18 No. 213
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GRID OPERATION CRITICS B L L
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@llectura
HE National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said on Wednesday it has been compliant with its mandate to ensure that the country’s transmission assets are in optimal condition to convey safe, quality, and reliable electricity. The grid operator has once again caught the ire of the lawmakers who called for the revocation of its franchise if proven that NGCP is ineffective of its mandate. “NGCP is fully cognizant that its franchise is a privilege granted to it by government. We remain ready to answer any and all questions raised concerning how we do business,” the grid operator said late Wednesday when sought for C A
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Climate activists join forces with Doraemon, the renowned Japanese animé character, urging Japan, as the chair of the G7 Summit, to display courageous and visionary leadership. Their objective is to ignite transformative action in finance and policy, steering them towards achieving compatibility with the 1.5ºC target by 2030. The activists specifically call on Japan to cease financing coal and other fossil fuels, and instead swiftly redirect investments towards renewable energy sources. NONIE REYES
235M TRAVELED ACROSS ‘100K jobs could be GLOBE IN 1Q 2023–UNWTO obsolete in 3 years’ B M. S F. A
@akosistellaBM Special to the BM
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HE recovery of global tourism remains on track, with an estimated 235 million traveling intentionally in the first three months of the year, or about 80 percent of prepandemic levels in the same reference period. The first quarter 2023 results, said the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in a news statement, are in line with its projections for international arrivals to recover 80 percent to 90 percent of prepandemic levels, with the Northern
Hemisphere expected to post a strong peak season from May to August. Per the UNWTO’s second World Tourism Barometer, the Middle East was the only region that surpassed its prepandemic international tourist arrivals, growing by 15 percent in the first quarter of the year versus the same period in 2019. This was followed by Europe, which recovered 90 percent of prepandemic levels, Africa (88 percent), and the Americas (85 percent). “Asia and the Pacific accelerated its recovery with 54 percent S “UNWTO,” A
B R L. A Contributor
THOUSANDS of jobs that Filipinos are doing today are at risk of becoming obsolete in the near future, according to global management consultancy company Kearney. Marco de la Rosa, country head for the Philippines at Kearney, said their latest study on the most attractive jobs reveals that about 50,000 to 100,000 occupations are being netted off in the next three or four years. A lot of them, he cited, are going to be in retail, back office, finance, and telecommunications industries.
“So the important thing here is how to get to that next level of skills so that the value add is incrementally higher,” he told reporters in a briefing in Taguig City on Tuesday. On the other side of the coin, however, he reiterated that “there’s a similar number of new jobs that are being created coming up as well.” These include designers, sustainability specialists, and any position that touches on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). “Apart from the new roles is the evolution of the current roles that S “,” A
PESO EXCHANGE RATES US 56.1170 ■ JAPAN 0.4116 ■ UK 70.0733 ■ HK 7.1594 ■ SINGAPORE 41.8690 ■ AUSTRALIA 37.3459 ■ SAUDI ARABIA 14.9649 ■ EU 60.9655 ■ KOREA 0.0418 ■ CHINA 8.0416 Source: BSP (May 17, 2023)