Malaysian Crypto Firm Hata Receives Green Light From Malaysian Regulators to Run ‘Digital Asset Exchange’ – Adoption on the Rise?

The Malaysian financial regulator – Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) – has granted in-principal approval to cryptocurrency exchange and digital broker Hata.The approval marks Hata as a Recognized Market Operator (RMO) and the 5^th regulated digital asset exchange (DAX) in the country, operating alongside existing players such as Luno.Per an announcement Tuesday, Hata also received a Money Broker license from Malaysia’s Labuan Financial Services Authority, a federal island territory, in June for its US Dollar exchange.The platform noted that it will be working towards receiving a full license from the Malaysian securities regulator “before it opens its platform to customers in Malaysia by early 2024.”Other registered digital asset exchanges in Malaysia include Luno, MX Global, Sinegy DAX and Tokenize Technology. The regulator has also listed exchanges and crypto service providers such as Upbit Malaysia, Bitpoint, Xbit, which are not allowed to continue operations in the country.With the in-principal license, the exchange aims to make crypto investing a lot easier for institutional investors, individual high-net-worth persons and businesses in the country.“With the goal of challenging the existing norms, we plan to make digital asset investing easier to both institutional investors, businesses and high-net-worth individuals in Malaysia and we look forward to launching our platform soon,” said David Low, CEO of Hata.Furthermore, Hata is also in talks with several potential partners ad investor interests in the Asia Pacific region and particularly in Singapore. Especially at a time when the city-state is seeing significant growth in the digital asset space, despite market setbacks last year.