- 3 months ago
Belanjawan 2026 tidak menyentuh langsung isu aset digital meskipun nilai dagangan kripto tempatan mencecah RM1.4 bilion pada 2024. Aaron Tang dari Luno Malaysia mengulas tentang jurang dasar, keperluan insentif dan infrastruktur jagaan aset yang boleh menjadikan Malaysia sebagai hab serantau.
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00:00Belanjawan 2026 was tabled amid growing in global momentum for digital asset regulation and institutional adoption.
00:08Yet Malaysia's budget speech made no direct mention of digital assets, crypto taxation or blockchain infrastructure incentive.
00:16Despite the sector's estimate RM1.4 billion in local trading volume in 2024 and increasing institutional interest,
00:24the omission raises question, is Malaysia missing a strategic opportunity to position itself as a regional digital asset hub?
00:33Are institutional players still left in regulatory limbo?
00:36Joining us to unpack this is Aaron Tang, General Manager for APEC Aluno Malaysia, one of the country's leading digital asset platforms.
00:44I want to say thank you very much, Aaron. How are you?
00:46Very good, thank you. Thank you for having me, Lina.
00:49No worries. From your view, does Belanjawan 2026 do enough to provide the regulatory certainty institution need to allocate to digital assets in Malaysia?
01:00If not, what is missing?
01:03I think Belanjawan 2026 was very, very interesting, especially there are actually some mentions of digital assets.
01:10For example, if you talk about the Labuan IBFC, so the Labuan International Business Financial Centre,
01:18there was talk about making it into a digital Islamic finance hub, talking about global Sukuk initiatives,
01:24ability to launch Sukuk and be traded on digital asset exchanges.
01:28Now, I think that's, to my knowledge, the one mention of digital assets.
01:33However, I think in terms of the other things, it's not so much missing from Budget 2026 as a lot of these initiatives have already been announced.
01:45So, for example, earlier this year, PMX has mentioned about things like the digital asset innovation hub,
01:51things like the desire to make Malaysia a blockchain hub and so on.
01:56So, in terms of the Budget 2026 itself, perhaps it does not go so much into the details of digital assets there,
02:03but definitely some of the programmes, some of the initiatives are already in the planning
02:08and we wait with bated breath to see what will come out from these initiatives.
02:14And one practical driver of institution adoption is tax treatment.
02:19What targeted tax reform?
02:20Or we can say this is one of the budget, we can say tax and also a lot of things that was focused.
02:27And then examples of capital gains, corporate tax treatment of crypto holdings or VAT SSC treatment
02:34would most accelerate institutions putting digital assets on their balance sheets.
02:40What's your POV?
02:42Yeah, so the good thing is we already have quite a good certainty in this area.
02:47Again, even though not specifically mentioned in Budget 2026, right?
02:51But we recently had our own institutional digital asset conference about a few weeks back.
02:56And actually, most of these items that you've mentioned, there's already certainty.
03:00So, that's a really good step for Malaysia.
03:02I'll give you some examples.
03:03So, it's very clear that Malaysia does not currently impose capital gains tax, CGT, on digital assets.
03:11So, basically, companies or individuals who hold digital assets,
03:14they are able to hold it for investment and not pay tax on those gains.
03:18Now, there's also clarity in terms of trading activity.
03:21So, for example, if people are actively trading digital assets,
03:24then, of course, that falls into the category of income.
03:29And then people will be able to be taxed on that.
03:32So, I think there is already guidance.
03:34You know, all the accountants, the consultants in this country,
03:38many are actually very, very well aware of this tax treatment for digital assets.
03:43And I think perhaps we have not, you know, been that loud enough
03:47or we have not shared enough in terms of the awareness and the education of that matter.
03:52But definitely, if people, if companies want to hold digital assets today,
03:56whether for investment or whether for active trading,
03:59the institutional regulation guidelines, they are already in place.
04:03And the governments often weight incentives against financial integrity risks.
04:09What incentive structure would you propose that both attracts institutional custody or trading businesses
04:16to Malaysia and reassures regulators about AML or CFD and custody safety?
04:21I think it's always important to have a balanced approach.
04:26So, we're talking about balancing something that is new and innovative.
04:30But anything new and innovative definitely comes with risk, right?
04:33So, I think Malaysia has gone about it in quite the right way.
04:37In terms of we are already announcing several of these sandboxes and initiatives.
04:42So, something that I've mentioned earlier in terms of Bank Negara Malaysia launching their digital asset innovation hub.
04:48And then I think the other regulatory bodies like the Securities Commission, MDAC,
04:53are also very, very active in the space to try and encourage more and more innovation.
04:57So, SC also has their own sandbox and so on.
04:59So, I think one of the critical things is to encourage more participation into these sandboxes.
05:06And I think sandboxes are really good because they allow you to do innovation
05:10and prove something before you actually take on, for example,
05:15a lot of investment and a lot of costs in some of the supporting areas.
05:19I think some of the other interesting things that could encourage this kind of innovation,
05:26you know, we've seen Malaysia do very well before in offering tax breaks,
05:31tax incentives to companies who decide to launch their products
05:35or decide to move their headquarters to Malaysia.
05:37So, I think that's always very, very, very, very good for companies.
05:43And I think lastly, in terms of what you call that, in terms of building up the local ecosystem.
05:50So, you know, we do need to continue to have highly talented, highly technical people.
05:55So, I think continued engagement with education, what you call education bodies,
06:00for example, universities and so on.
06:02Also, grants in terms of research that will also help the ecosystem to continue to develop talent.
06:07All right, talking about the ecosystem, we need the right framework.
06:11And Belanjawan 1026 continues to outcome-based incentive frameworks for high-value industries.
06:18How could an outcome-based incentive be structured specifically for blockchain developers,
06:25node operators or web-free infrastructure to boost even more R&D and jobs
06:30without encouraging low-quality token launches?
06:33Yeah, I think a couple of ideas.
06:37So, for example, some incentives could be milestone-based grants.
06:40So, for example, we launch a project, we need to achieve X target, Y target.
06:44That could be encouraging for some of the local entrepreneurs.
06:48Something I mentioned about, I don't want to keep saying it,
06:51but, you know, corporate tax incentives.
06:53So, you know, for example, a pioneer project may be able to have five years of preferred tax treatment
07:00or, you know, maybe even, what do you call that, other tax incentives.
07:04I think the important thing to mention is that many of these discussions are already happening.
07:10So, a couple, I think about two weeks back, I was also sitting together with some of our industry partners.
07:16We were discussing with some of the ministry players and also a lot of the industry partners in terms of what can we do?
07:22What are we looking ahead for the roadmap for the national blockchain?
07:27So, I think a lot of these are underway.
07:30And we, of course, continue to be very, very supportive and wait to see what happens.
07:34And this is a very exciting journey and definitely could not happen without collaborations and cooperation from every stakeholder,
07:44especially from the public-private.
07:46And for Malaysia to be a regional hub, a reliable custody and settlement infrastructure are critical.
07:52What public-private steps, regulatory sandboxes, as you mentioned earlier, co-founded custody labs, industry standards,
07:58would you like to see in the Belanjawan or follow-up policy sections?
08:02Yeah, I think some of these actions, they don't have to specifically be mentioned in Belanjawan,
08:09given that these are basically industry initiatives together with the regulators, right?
08:14So, in our dealing with the regulators, they have been very, very encouraging to ask us, you know,
08:19as an industry, you know, you have to work together.
08:22It's not just like competing with each other.
08:25Competition is there, but I think the collaboration, especially for a new industry like blockchain, digital assets and so on,
08:31the collaboration between industry players is very, very important.
08:34So, I'll give you an example.
08:36For example, in terms of the anti-money laundering or counter-financing of terrorism kind of guidelines,
08:44the regulators may be able to give us a template or they'll give us a guideline of expectations, right?
08:50But that itself is based on principles.
08:53So, in terms of best practices, how does the industry actually implement these practices?
08:58A lot of that can happen between, say, an industry association and so on.
09:02So, we've done, for example, we have an industry association.
09:05Our industry association has a working group between the compliance officers.
09:10And I think that's a very, very good example of how both private institutions can also work together as a team
09:18and also work together with regulators.
09:21And that is from the private partnerships and even cost-free infrastructure.
09:26And also, we want to say the whole chain is safer, even from the provider until the consumer,
09:32and financial inclusion and consumer protection especially.
09:36One argument for national encouragement of digital asset is financial inclusion and innovation.
09:41How should the budget balance measures that encourage retail access with consumer protection,
09:48education, disclosure, dispute resolution, so Malaysia can avoid past crypto market harms?
09:56Yeah, a couple of initiatives are already being discussed with the regulators,
10:01with the Securities Commission at the moment.
10:02So, I think they've recently launched 2.0 guidelines for digital asset exchanges.
10:08And I think the industry is still discussing in terms of what the regulator is asking.
10:14But the Securities Commission is basically trying to help the sector grow up, right,
10:19become stronger in terms of governance, in terms of customer safety,
10:23in terms of making sure that this industry continues to thrive and be very, very attractive.
10:29I'll talk about some of the things that have been mentioned by the regulator.
10:33So, in terms of digital asset coin listings today in Malaysia, we only have 22.
10:40But moving forward, say, I think, I believe sometime next year,
10:43when there is ability for digital asset exchanges themselves to be a bit more flexible
10:48in terms of the digital assets that they can list,
10:51I think this will be very, very attractive for the digital asset exchanges.
10:55I think consumers will also have more choices.
10:58However, of course, we have to make sure that the consumers are protected.
11:01So, in terms of some of the proposals, they are things that we have to have stricter standards
11:07in terms of custody, stricter standards in terms of our operations.
11:10So, I think these are already being discussed at the moment.
11:13And I think it's very encouraging that the regulator is wanting us to move forward.
11:18All right.
11:19And probably our last question to close our discussion.
11:22Should budget funds be allocated for national crypto literacy campaigns
11:26or protected investors' compensation schemes?
11:31I mean, in our ideal world, Nina, we would have both.
11:34We would have, you know, a lot of education.
11:36We would have compensation schemes.
11:38However, you know, budget is budget.
11:39It's using the limited amount of funds.
11:44So, I think what industry players like ourselves can do,
11:47industry players, regardless of what's mentioned in the budget, right,
11:51what industry players like ourselves can do,
11:52we can also put a lot of investment into helping educate customers.
11:57So, I'll give a worrying piece of statistic is that I think millions and millions
12:03or hundreds of millions are lost to scams.
12:06And a lot of these times, these scams are in the digital asset.
12:10You know, they call it digital asset.
12:12But it's not even maybe digital asset.
12:14Maybe it's an impersonation scam or so on.
12:16So, I think industry players like ourselves,
12:18we do continue to need, we need to continue to educate the public.
12:22And I think we should be helping, you know,
12:25to put some of our efforts and, you know,
12:27perhaps even some of our funds to work together to educate people more.
12:31All right.
12:31Thank you very much for joining us this morning
12:34and helping us understand one of the experts from BelanjaOne 2026
12:38and how can we give further focus on the digital asset
12:42and what are the required environment that we need
12:44to build the whole ecosystems from below to upper.
12:49And again, I want to say thank you very much to our guest,
12:51Aaron Towne, General Manager, APEC of Luno, Malaysia.
12:54And that is the segment for BelanjaOne 2026.
12:57And right after this, we're going to move on to Awani International.
13:00Thank you very much.
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