Today in Crypto: Senators Urge Zuckerberg to Fight Crypto Scams on Facebook; MicroStrategy Seeks to Sell $500M in Stock to Buy Bitcoin

Regulators in Thailand are tightening rules on digital assets, following several irregularities and the termination of a big acquisition involving a crypto exchange.

According to a Sept. 8. Bloomberg report, this will likely create obstacles around its goal of becoming a leading crypto trading sector for Southeast Asia. The country was the first in the region to put digital asset legislation in place in 2018, which made it attractive to younger people in the area looking to buy crypto.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission licensed six platform exchanges at the time, including Bitkub Capital and Zipmex Thailand. However, a Bitkub executive received a fine of 8.5 million baht ($233,459) for alleged insider trading, while Zipmex and its CEO have also received a police complaint.

Along with the broader global turmoil in the crypto markets for much of this year, this has contributed to some fallout — SCB x Pcl, a financial group, ditched its plans to buy a majority of Bitkub Online due to that exchange operator’s regulatory issues.

In other news, six Democrats who are part of the Senate Banking Committee have asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg what Meta is doing to fight crypto scams on the numerous social media platforms it owns.

CoinDesk wrote Friday (Sept. 9) that the senators wrote a letter to Zuckerberg, noting that there have been a glut of crimes taking place on social media.

“From Jan. 1, 2021 through March 31, 2022, 49% of fraud reports to the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] involving cryptocurrency specified that the scam originated on social media,” the senators wrote. They also said the scams had cost a combined total of $417 million to consumers, and wrote that some of Meta’s sites are “particularly popular hunting grounds for scammers.”

Meta didn’t reply to a request for comment by PYMNTS.

Finally, MicroStrategy has filed to sell up to $500 million of its common stock to help it buy more bitcoin, according to an SEC filing.

MicroStrategy said its corporate strategy for business involves acquiring and holding bitcoin, along with growing its enterprise analytics software business. The company added that the bitcoin aspect has grown its profile with some possible software customers, and the software side of the business gives it enough cash flow to buy bitcoin.

The company said bitcoin is appealing because it “can serve as a store of value, supported by a robust and public open-source architecture, that is untethered to sovereign monetary policy and can therefore serve as a hedge against inflation in the long term.”

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