The Philippine Central Bank recently approved new rules and regulations governing the operation of virtual currency exchanges. The Central Bank of the Philippines defines virtual currency (VC) as, “any type of digital unit that is used as a medium of exchange or a form of digitally stored value created by agreement within the community of VC users.”
They recognizes that Virtual Currency systems have “the potential to revolutionize” the delivery of financial services, “particularly for payments and remittance, in view of their ability to provide faster and more economical transfer of funds, both domestic and international, and may further support financial inclusion.” However, the Central Bank of the Philippines does not intend to endorse any VC, “such as bitcoin,” as a currency, “since it is neither issued or guaranteed by a central bank nor backed by any commodity.”
Many social and technological indications show that the Philippines is an ideal market for Bitcoin, including a lagging banking infrastructure coupled with high smartphone adoption rates. However, despite the environment, Bitcoin’s primary reason for the strong growth in the Philippines has remained the popularity of using it as a backbone for remittance services.
The Philippines has been a global leader in bitcoin remittance since 2013, when payment service Coins.ph and the Satoshi Citadel Industries (SCI)-owned Rebit began competing in the local remittance market. The peer-to-peer exchange Localbitcoins has also seen a large and growing trade volume in the country.
