Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has drafted new rules for custody of digital assets intended to strengthen investor protections, the SEC said in a statement.

• The draft regulations look to prohibit crypto custodians from extracting benefits from their clients’ assets. Under the rules, digital asset custodians can’t use one client’s assets for the benefit of someone else, nor can they use it for their own benefit, such as lending the digital assets for interest.
• Crypto custodians could deposit a client’s assets only at a commercial bank and would have to agree on the interest rate with their client.
• Under the rules, the crypto custodians would have to close clients’ accounts every business day to ensure that client assets are accounted for and not used for someone else’s benefit.
• Fiat deposits with crypto custodians should be protected just as digital assets are, using “decentralized approval authority, multi-sign approval authority and check and balance,” the SEC said.
• The draft rules are open for public comment until Sept. 22.
• The Thai SEC has been very active in crypto in recent months: In June, it warned against decentralized finance (DeFi) and banned meme tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and in July, it filed a complaint against Binance, which is the world’s largest crypto exchange.