A visiting executive of the Crypto Valley Association (CVA), Zug, a Switzerland-based blockchain organization said the Philippine blockchain community should strive for self regulation to hasten its development.

Cecilia Mueller Chen, a director of the CVA gave this advice to the local blockchain community during the third general assembly of the Philippine Association of Digital Commerce and Decentralized Industry (PADCDI) in Makati City.

“Self-regulation is the way to go because it is faster than waiting for government regulators to come up with a set of rules that could hinder the growth of the blockchain space,” she said in her presentation.

She cited as an example the famous Crypto Valley, a cluster of cryptocurrency-focused companies and foundation in Zug, which was granted a self-regulatory organization (SRO) status by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA.

“If you are going to wait for regulators to come up with regulations, the [development] process will be slower because these government agencies take time to do what they need to do,” she added.

Indeed since December last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas announced a collaboration to draft a unified regulation on cryptocurrencies, particularly rules governing initial coin offerings (ICO).

During the second PADCDI general assembly, SEC Commissioner Ephyro Luis Amatong asked all stakeholders to provide input for the draft regulations on blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

He told members of the group, “The government wants to be proactive in creating rules about cryptocurrency. We want to engage all the stakeholders by asking for your feedback. We don’t want to ban anything just because we don’t understand something. That is why your feedback and your cooperation are important so we can come up with an appropriate rule about cryptocurrency trading.”

However, Chen said that to become a full-pledged SRO, the community must accept the responsibilities that go with it and ensure all the actors are behaving appropriately to protect investors and consumers interests.

She explained that a blockchain community which wants to establish themselves as an SRO must draft a code of conduct “to frame the way members pursue a common goal and to protect the reputation of the organization while creating lasting value.”

When asked to comment that a self-regulated environment only works when all actors are on the same page to protect their reputation and investor’s interests, with criminals or unscrupulous people not willing to join such an organization, Chen said that is fine.

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