Bank of Thailand Audits USDT, Cash Flows to Curb Scams
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- Bank of Thailand is working with the Kingdom's Securities and Exchange Commission to audit high-volume stablecoin transactions — focused on USDT — alongside cash transactions and currency exchanges to identify illicit financial flows.
- Governor Vitai Ratanakorn told local outlet The Nation the measures require "continuous deployment of multiple parallel strategies" and are not short-term fixes.
- The crackdown targets Thailand's "gray economy" — cash from suspicious origins including scam call centers — with 2025 scam losses estimated at $3.4 billion amid 173 million scam calls and texts, per the source.
- Compliance duties now extend across cash networks, currency exchanges, gold bullion trading and suspicious stablecoin transactions; cash deposits above 5 million baht ($150,000) require full source-of-funds disclosure.
- Large-denomination-to-small-denomination cash exchanges lacking a clear business reason will also be monitored, per the report.
- Despite Thailand's crypto-haven reputation, stablecoin payments remain outlawed by the central bank; Bitkub, the country's largest exchange, sees about $26 million in daily volume with the USDT/THB pair most popular and roughly 40% of activity being forex, per CoinGecko.
- Thailand's banks froze three million accounts in 2025 during a prior mule-account crackdown that media described as "a scammer crackdown gone wrong," ensnaring legitimate businesses and individuals.
Why it matters: Commercial banks, forex shops, gold traders and crypto platforms in Thailand now face expanded source-of-funds declarations on cash deposits above 5 million baht ($150,000), and the central bank is explicitly auditing USDT flows — meaningful for Bitkub, which routes roughly $26 million in daily USDT/THB volume still treated as illegal payment rails. The overreach risk is concrete: 2025's three-million-account freeze reportedly swept in lawful users, and this wider surveillance net could catch legitimate crypto and cash businesses again.
