Sretta Thavisin, Entrepreneur With Crypto Background, Elected Prime Minister Of Thailand

Thailand's new Prime Minister, Sretta Thavisin, has a crypto investor background. (photo: Twitter @Thavisin)

JAKARTA - On August 22, Thailand's parliament elected property entrepreneur Sretta Thavisin as the country's next prime minister. Thavisin is better known as former president and CEO of Sansiri, one of Thailand's largest property developers, who also has a background in cryptocurrencies.

Thavisin was the only candidate proposed by the Thai Pheu Party, and received 482 votes out of a total of 747 votes in Thai parliament.

His victory has the potential to have implications for the cryptocurrency industry in Thailand, as Sansiri is active as an investor in the country's digital asset industry. Thavisin stepped down as CEO of Sansiri in April 2023 amid speculation that he would be appointed Thai PM. He also relinquished his 4.4% stake in Sansiri at the time.

In 2021, Sansiri will participate in raising $225 million for crypto-friendly investment management firm XSpring Capital. Furthermore, XSpring launched a fully integrated crypto trading platform by 2022. The company hopes to become one of the top three companies in the crypto exchange market by 2025.

In addition to supporting Thailand's main crypto project, Thavisin's Sansiri is also known for issuing and distributing its own token via XSpring in 2022. The token called SiriHub Token is part of a property-backed initial coin offering offering offering offering a total of 240 million tokens to the general public by 2022.

In April 2023, the Pheu Thai Party - which Thavisin took part in November 2022 - proposed distributing money to Thai citizens if they won elections, in particular delivering 10,000 Thai bahts (Rp4.3 million) to the public and sending the amount using digital currencies.

The Thavisin administration, which is expected to start its task by the end of September, remains to be seen if its crypto background will affect Thai crypto policy.

Days before the vote, Thavisin used X ( formerly known as Twitter) to emphasize that he participated in the election because he wanted to "improve the country and the economy".

"My enemies are poverty and community inequality. My goal is the welfare of all Thai people," said Thavisin.

This news comes months after Thailand's cabinet decided to provide tax breaks for the company's income tax and added value taxes for companies that issue investment tokens. Announced the initiative in March, Government Spokesperson for Deputy Rachada Dhnadirek said that the government hopes that the investment token offering will generate 128 billion baht (IDR 55.8 trillion) in the next two years.