‍Gotta Believe in Magic

Joey Roxas, president of Eagle Equities Inc., argued during an interview on ANC’s Money Talks that the stock market would benefit from a ban on cryptocurrency trading.

“I think one thing that can get this market moving faster and higher and getting more attention from the general public is a ban on crypto because it does not do anything at all for the Philippine economy. Zero,” Roxas said.

The statement paints crypto as a drain with no economic value, while suggesting that banning it would somehow redirect investor enthusiasm into equities. The argument conveniently assumes a one-to-one tradeoff between crypto and stocks. Many global markets along with many netizens say otherwise. Things are way more complex to be articulated through blatantly oversimplified insight. Although the truth may be hard to swallow, it isn’t hard to understand. 

Because, in reality, financial markets don’t magically redirect liquidity just because a segment disappears. Many Filipino investors juggle both crypto and equities. Removing crypto wouldn’t funnel all those funds neatly into the PSE—it would likely push trading into unregulated channels or simply shrink overall engagement. This isn’t sorcery, it’s economics.

A Lesson of Slippery Slope Fallacy

This is textbook slippery-slope reasoning: suppress one market, and suddenly another shall rise. It’s as flawed as saying, “Ban smartphones and the telegraph market will boom.” Healthy markets thrive on choice, not exclusion.

To understand what pragmatic, not magical, financial policy looks like, consider El Salvador. Despite IMF pressure to curtail crypto activity, they’ve continued acquiring about 1 BTC per day, part of a broader strategy to legitimize crypto as “strategic reserves”. This commitment signals long-term belief, not bandwagon economics.

Meanwhile, regulators here, like the SEC, are threading the needle—they’ve clarified that crypto trading is legal, not about banning one sector to shore up another. Contrast that with Roxas’s statement—it’s less a policy prescription and more a public confession of the stock market’s lag in innovation.

If banning crypto could really “boost” stocks overnight, we might start believing in fairy tales. But real economies don’t shuffle money through wishful thinking—they grow through inclusivity, innovation, and transparency—not through prohibition.

‍