Taiwan has formulated relatively friendlier regulations governing virtual currency exchanges, which is expected to help the country's trading of digital tokens expand significantly, according to David Pan, president of ACE Exchange, a digital asset trading platform.
Speaking at Global Blockchain Smart Application Forum held recently in Taipei, Pan said that the Taiwan government has regarded digital currencies as a kind of commercial merchandise and allowed initial coin offering (ICO) launches. In addition, the government has been active in pushing for self-regulated practices by operators of digital token trading houses while also moving to build related supervision mechanisms.
Pan said all these efforts are expected to significantly drive up Taiwan's daily digital currency exchange turnover, now averaging only around NT$100 million (US$3.25 million). The figure lags far behind a corresponding equivalent of NT$12.5 billion in South Korea, although Taiwan's average daily stock exchange trading value of around NT$140 billion is similar to South Korea's.
Pan cited statistics as indicating that a total of around 1,500 digital currencies have been issued around the world so far, and their total market values amounted to US$441.3 billion as of the end of March 2018. Of the currencies, Bitcoin commanded the highest portion, at around 40% or US$176.1 billion, of the market values with an issuance volume of 16.89 million units, compared with 19% and US$84 billion for Ether, 8% and US$35.4 billion for Ripple, and 2% for Litecoin.
At the moment, 44% of digital coin trading is denominated in Japanese yen and 35% in the US dollar, compared to the previous dominance of Chinese yuan as a main currency traded for virtual tokens.