Thailand’s oldest bank plans to become the majority shareholder from one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the country after a purchase of USD 536.7 million.
According to an announcement Tuesday, it is expected that SCB X Group from Siam Commercial Bank buy 51% of the shares of Thailand-based crypto exchange Bitkub for 17,850 million baht (approximately USD 536.7 million) for the second quarter of 2022. The exchange said that The deal is subject to approval by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the country’s central bank.
Arthit Nanthawittaya, CEO of Siam Commercial Bank, said that The acquisition was based on the growth of companies in the digital asset space over the past two years and long-term expected value. The company hinted at the goal of strengthening and growing the digital asset ecosystem in Thailand.
“Bitkub has reached the point where we have become an important structure in the future economy of Thailand,” said Jirayut Srupsrisopa, founder and CEO of Bitkub. “Bitkub is no longer just a startup. It is becoming a necessary infrastructure for the financial industry 3.0 in Thailand ”.
Bitkub is one of the few crypto exchanges in Thailand that operates with the approval of the country’s SEC. After publishing the revised cryptocurrency regulations in November 2020, the financial regulator directed the exchange to suspend its services and fix issues related to outages during periods of high demand. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the exchange had more than $ 274 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours.
Regulators in Thailand have issued a series of guidelines for individual cryptocurrency traders and companies. In June, SEC officials issued a notice that Thai exchanges were prohibited handle tokens based on memes, fan tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFT) and tokens issued by exchanges. The regulator also proposed a set of guidelines in August related to the custody of investors’ cryptocurrency holdings held by commercial operators of digital assets.
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