At a glance

  • Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published a draft notification limiting stablecoin deposits and withdrawals to 5 million baht per customer per day (about $148,000 / €133,000) at each licensed operator, with inbound and outbound counted separately, it said on Thursday.
  • Stablecoins could move only to and from accounts or wallets verified as belonging to the same customer. Public comments close on 26 Nov.

The draft follows a consultation the SEC ran in September. Its stated aim is to stop digital assets being used for money laundering, cybercrime or getting around rules on international money transfers. It is a proposal, not a rule.

What the draft says

Operators would have to check that every wallet a customer sends from or to is theirs, using Travel Rule checks (the rule that platforms share sender and receiver details), customer profiling, screening for mule accounts and blockchain-analytics tools to trace links to high-risk wallets. Transfers to or from another person’s account or wallet would be banned. Values must also match the customer’s income and financial position.

The 5 million baht limit would not apply to transfers between a customer’s own accounts at SEC-supervised operators, provided both follow the Travel Rule. Operators moving funds in their own names for business, firms with Bank of Thailand approval for specific stablecoin uses, market makers in stablecoin and baht pairs, and approved token-offering subscriptions and refunds would also be exempt, according to the SEC.

Brokers, market makers and off-platform trades

Exchanges would have to publish the names of their market makers and the assets they cover. Brokers would be barred from using liquidity providers for stablecoin and baht pairs, and would have to disclose the liquidity providers they do use, along with any conflicts of interest.

Off-platform deals by brokers and dealers, meaning trades not matched on an exchange, would need a minimum value of 3 million baht (about $89,000 / €80,000) and published prices. Brokers could not match customers against each other off-platform, though they could route an order to an exchange in Thailand or abroad.

The details above come from the SEC’s release. The Block separately reported the same terms and noted the draft would not cover peer-to-peer on-chain transfers outside registered platforms. Conversions use the ECB reference rate of 12 Nov.

Why it matters: a daily ceiling and own-wallet rule would make Thai exchanges a much narrower route for moving large stablecoin sums, which is the point. The SEC has also been tightening elsewhere; see its criminal complaint against Bitget. For the basics, what a dollar stablecoin is.

What happens next

Comments are open until 26 Nov through the SEC and Legal Hub websites. The SEC has not said when a final notification would take effect.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.