Thailand’s Oldest Bank Acquires Majority Stake in Country’s Largest Crypto Exchange
SCB paid $536.6 million for a 51% stake in Bitkub.
Nov 2, 2021 at 2:05 p.m. UTCUpdated May 11, 2023 at 6:02 p.m. UTC
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Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) has acquired a 51% stake in Thai cryptocurrency exchange Bitkub.
- Thailand’s oldest bank, SCB paid 17.85 billion baht (US$536.6 million) for the majority stake in the exchange, according to an announcement Tuesday.
- The transaction is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2022, subject to regulatory approval.
- Bitkub, which is licensed by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has reported trading volume of over $30 billion from January to September 2021, making it comfortably the country’s largest crypto exchange, with a market share of over 90%.
- However, the exchange fell afoul of the regulator earlier this year over issues on its platform causing severe outages, one of which lasted 16 hours amid increased trading activity. The SEC ordered Bitkub to shut down for five days to iron out the bugs.
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Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.