IN a move last week that reportedly came as a surprise — although it shouldn't have — to most cryptocurrency investors and fans in the Philippines, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formally asked the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to block online access to Binance, currently the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. The decision has provoked bitter protest from local market players, but it was the correct decision on the SEC's part, and handled with more than enough accommodation for Filipino Binance users' need to retrieve their funds.