Huobi to permanently shut crypto operations in Thailand

After its operating license was revoked by the Thai Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), Huobi’s Thailand unit is set to wind down operations by July 1.

The Thai SEC revoked Huobi’s license in May after it failed to comply with the local regulations. The permanent closure orders come nearly eight months after the regulators suspended the exchange’s services in September.

Huobi Thailand is based on the original Huobi Cloud Thailand project built by Huobi Cloud and its local Thai partner G.L.T. Huobi Cloud provides only technical product support and brand authorization.

The current brand authorization and technical service contracts with Huobi Thailand have expired, and Huobi Cloud will no longer provide support for this project in the future.

The exchange claimed it has tried to fix the regulatory issues but will have to wind down operations owing to SEC orders.

“Due to the SEC decision, Huobi Thailand is no longer an authorized digital asset exchange in Thailand. We will be shutting down the platform permanently on July 1, 2022.”

The official statement from the Thai SEC revealed that the crypto exchange was first warned about its inadequate system measures in March last year. The crypto exchange was also granted multiple extensions to fix its trading system, customer asset retention system and information technology systems, but despite multiple extensions and assurances, the crypto exchange failed to comply with SEC regulations.

Thus after a thorough review of the series of violations and failure to fix the issues, the regulatory body decided to revoke the digital asset business license permanently on May 17, 2022.

“The Finance Minister, on the recommendation of the SEC, considered that Huobi still violated and failed to comply with the SEC's order conditions. Digital asset business license in the category of a digital token trading center of Huobi is revoked, effective from May 17, 2022.“

Related: Thailand SEC bans crypto payments, seeks disclosure of system failure from exchanges

The crypto exchange has put out a notice on its official Thai platform website, reminding customers to withdraw their funds and also left a refund address to contact in case users fail to withdraw their funds before the permanent closure.

Huobi didn’t respond to requests for comments from Cointelegraph at press time.

Thailand is considered one of the progressive crypto nations in Asia with tax exemptions for traders and a regulated environment for crypto exchanges. However, many crypto exchanges including Binance have faced issues with the regulatory guidelines in the past.

Earlier in March this year, the Thai SEC banned crypto as a means of payment and also announced that crypto exchanges must disclose their system failures to ensure user protection.