Vietnam reins in digital currencies

— we’re not going to get rich selling to ourselves,” Anne Ruston, Australia’s assistant minister for agriculture and water resources, said in a media release on Monday. “It makes sense that we export our wine when the world’s largest market is right on our doorstep.” The Vietnamese prime minister has signed a directive calling for stronger measures to rein in Bitcoin and other digital currencies amid fear that they could destabilize the financial market and hurt traders, local media reported. Under the directive, credit institutions in Vietnam are not allowed to carry out digital currency-related transactions and must swiftly report any suspicious activities, the Vietnam Financial Times newspaper reported. Public companies, brokerages, fund management companies and investment funds are banned from any illegal activities related to digital currencies and are required to comply with the anti-money laundering rules. that based on advance estimates, the country’s gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2018 grew 4.3 percent year-on-year. That was higher than the GDP growth of 3.6 percent for the fourth quarter of 2017 and also 3.6 percent for the whole year. On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualized basis, Singapore’s economy expanded by 1.4 percent in the first quarter, lower than the 2.1 percent growth in the previous quarter. In a breakdown, Singapore’s manufacturing sector grew 10.1 percent yearon-year in the first quarter, compared to the 4.8 percent growth in the fourth quarter of last year.