The Bank of Thailand is working with the Securities and Exchange Commission to audit high-value stablecoin activity, with a particular focus on USDT. The review also covers large cash movements and currency exchange operations. Officials are trying to identify and disrupt channels used by criminal groups to move money tied to what authorities describe as the gray economy.
Bank of Thailand Governor Vitai Ratanakorn said the campaign is not a short-lived enforcement push. In remarks cited by local newspaper The Nation, he said the measures being deployed are not temporary fixes and require the continuous use of several parallel strategies. The message is clear: the authorities see the problem as broad, persistent, and difficult to address with one tool.
Scam-linked funds are a central concern in the gray economy probe
Thai authorities include money from scam call centers in their definition of gray-economy funds. According to the source material, scam losses in 2025 reached THB 115 billion, or about $3.4 billion. Officials also logged roughly 173 million fraudulent calls and text messages during the year. Even with those figures, the full scale of gray money circulating in Thailand remains unclear.
Stablecoins have become popular for moving large sums across borders because settlement is fast and relatively easy. That is why the latest measures broaden compliance obligations for commercial banks, currency exchange businesses, and gold traders. The central bank wants to prevent regulated financial institutions from being used to support corruption or shadow finance through these assets.
Oversight now stretches beyond crypto firms to cash and exchange networks
The new framework is not limited to on-chain transactions. It also reaches cash networks, exchange businesses, and suspicious stablecoin dealings, showing a layered attempt to tighten controls across the financial system. Thai banks and regulators have taken similar steps before, including joint efforts to freeze accounts linked to questionable activity.
Thailand remains open to digital-asset trading, but the Bank of Thailand still prohibits stablecoin and cryptocurrency payments. That leaves the market in a split position: trading is legal, while payment use remains off limits under central bank rules.
USDT/THB dominates activity as Bitkub handles about $26 million a day
On the market side, Bitkub, the country’s largest digital asset exchange, handles around $26 million in daily volume. Data cited from CoinGecko shows that nearly 40% of this activity comes from foreign exchange pairs, with USDT/THB standing as the leading pair on the platform. That trading pattern helps explain why regulators are paying close attention to stablecoin flows.
Earlier in 2025, Thai banks rolled out sweeping controls aimed at mule accounts and suspicious transactions, freezing 3 million bank accounts. The campaign was designed to curb illegal capital movement, but it also affected thousands of legitimate businesses and individuals and drew criticism for being too broad.
The latest cooperation between the Bank of Thailand and the SEC points to continued monitoring rather than a one-off action. Authorities say their approach to illicit finance and gray-money networks will rely on practical long-term enforcement instead of short-term fixes.