Thailand’s SEC Moves to Revoke Huobi's License

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked Huobi to halt its service operations in the country, citing the trading platform’s failure to implement the necessary requirements as defined by the country’s securities laws.

As announced by the market regulator, investigations have revealed that Huobi was not fit to operate its business in Thailand based on the exchange’s failure to abide by laid down rules in its management structure and work system.

For a while now, there has been a lot of back and forth between the commission and Huobi. The regulator has asked the exchange to suspend its operations pending its license temporarily. However, the trading firm has often requested extensions.

One of the many ultimatums given to Huobi has to meet its requirements has elapsed, and the regulator appears to be showing no more room for deadline extensions.

“The SEC has the resolution to recommend to the Minister of Finance to consider revoking the business license of Huobi (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (Huobi), which is now renamed DSDAQ (Thailand) Co., Ltd. In the meantime, the SEC has approved Giving Huobi to temporarily suspend its services as a digital asset trading centre until the business license is revoked. And during the suspension of such services, Huobi must return all assets to customers within three months from the date the SEC has a resolution to order,” the announcement detailed.

Exchanges have been hitting it off with regulators around in recent times. The current quit notice issued to Huobi models was issued to Binance exchange by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) back in June. The fundamental requirement is to implement Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures, with several exchanges always defaulting in this regard. 

Several exchanges in South Korea are also on the verge of being blocked by the country’s market watchdog, as many are finding it challenging to meet the regulator’s demands for registration. Only Upbit and a few others are clear against the September 24 deadline per an earlier Blockchain.news report. Clampdown on non-compliant exchange is encompassing and not peculiar to Huobi.