This is a proposal, not an immediate ban

Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission approved the principles on September 3 and plans to put them through public consultation during September 2026. The measures are therefore not yet final rules in the form described by the regulator.

The SEC says its monitoring shows a significant increase in both the volume and value of stablecoin activity through regulated digital-asset businesses. USDT is singled out as particularly prominent in that growth.

Its concern is less about whether a stablecoin can be traded and more about where the funds are moving. The agency points to money laundering, technology-related crime and attempts to bypass controls on international money transfers.

Third-party wallets are the clearest target

Under the proposed framework, an external wallet sending stablecoins into a customer's account at a Thai digital-asset operator would need to be verified as belonging to that customer.

The destination of a withdrawal would face the same ownership requirement. The SEC explicitly describes transfers from another person's account or wallet, and withdrawals to somebody else's account or wallet, as prohibited under the proposed model.

Those wallets would also fall under Travel Rule requirements and screening. Operators are expected to identify higher-risk customers, detect mule accounts and suspicious addresses, and use blockchain-tracing tools to look for links to risky or watchlisted wallets.

Five million baht per day, per customer, per operator

The numerical restriction is unusually specific. Incoming stablecoin transfers would be capped at 5 million baht per day for each person at each digital-asset operator. The same 5 million baht ceiling would apply to outgoing transfers.

The SEC also wants transfer values to be consistent with the customer's income source and financial circumstances.

Domestic transfers get an important carve-out. When funds move between customer accounts through Thai digital-asset businesses, the 5 million baht ceiling would not apply if both the sending and receiving operators use the Travel Rule.

That exception makes the direction fairly clear: large stablecoin movements are not necessarily being blocked, but the regulator wants them to remain inside channels where counterparties and transaction information can be identified.

Exchanges, brokers and liquidity providers are also in scope

The proposal goes beyond customer withdrawals. Thailand wants to revise oversight of market makers operating on digital-asset exchanges, borrowing some supervisory principles from securities markets while adapting them to crypto trading.

Digital-asset brokers using external liquidity providers would face requirements around the regulatory status of those providers and the source exchanges they connect to.

Off-platform transactions, including big-lot style deals, are another part of the package. The stated objective there is greater transparency around activity that takes place outside a platform's normal order flow.

Thailand is tightening USDT after previously opening the door to it

USDT itself is not being outlawed. Thailand added Tether's stablecoin and Circle's USDC to its list of eligible cryptocurrencies in March 2025, allowing them to be used in several regulated contexts including as base trading pairs on digital-asset exchanges.

The new policy is therefore a second stage of regulation. Access remains, but transactions passing through regulated intermediaries would carry stronger identity and traceability requirements.

The Travel Rule is already moving ahead

On September 2, one day before approving the stablecoin principles, the SEC announced its Travel Rule for Digital Assets. Those requirements are intended to ensure operators have enough information about the parties to a transfer to assess money-laundering and technology-crime risks.

The stablecoin work itself predates this week's vote. In August, the SEC and Bank of Thailand met digital-asset operators to discuss activity involving tokens including USDT and USDC. Measures under discussion already included wallet screening, blockchain tracing, customer profiling and automated detection of unusual transaction patterns.

The next formal step is the September consultation. Until that process is completed, the 5 million baht ceiling and restrictions on third-party wallets remain proposed measures rather than final operating rules.