Thai SEC Pens Insider Trading On Bitkub CTO

In today's edition of YIYL, we head over to Asia to learn an old but valuable lesson that exchanges are not your friend.

The Thai SEC has slapped local exchange BitKub with fines as well as going after their CEO. The fines are for failing to comply with local regulations before listing the platform's native token KUB.

While the case on the CTO is also related to the listing of KUB, reports accuse Wajanasathian of insider-trading case stems from an incident from last November, when the SCB acquisition plan was first announced.

According to the SEC reports, Wajanasathian – armed with this information – bought 1.99 million Thai baht (roughly $61,000 at the time) worth of the KUB token. The price of KUB subsequently more than doubled immediately upon the public announcement and he was able to dump that for a quick return.

Wajanasathian's LinkedIn page still shows him as CTO at Bitkub, although he's absent from the company's website.

Slapped with a fine

The chief technology officer (CTO) of Bitkub, Thailand's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said he will appeal against the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) 8.53-million-baht or $235,000 fine for insider trading.

In my opinion, this is chump change and doesn't really deter others from trying to copy these strategies especially if they are going to do it in the so-called DEX space.

News has ramifications

Due to the fast-growing interest in bitcoin and shitcoins, BitKub was growing pretty well, so much so that back in November 2021 Thailand’s oldest bank announced that it would scrapped become the majority shareholder of crypto exchange Bitkub.

This was no small deal, as SCB were willing to put up an eye-watering $500M to acquire the 51% stake, but as this news broke, they've since cooled their interest and it looks like Bitkub are on the ropes.

Thais are clamping down

Thailand has had a boom in recent years when it comes to bitcoin and stablecoins with a larger percentage of people starting to shitcoin and driving value outside the bhat. The Thai authorties already aren't happy with this, as they need to maintain certain ranges of the bhat and capital flows to remain competitive.

So the Thai authorities are trying to protect their golden goose which is their citizens and started to clamp down on the retail crypto market which has been seeing a downfall as the Thai SEC’s security measures around crypto tighten.

In January, Thailand’s SEC and central bank announced regulations to limit trading on unlicensed platforms. Which would have given Bitkub an advantage as it is one of the few crypto exchanges in Thailand operating with the approval of the country’s SEC.

Now they've gone and shot themselves in the foot for a few cents.

Sources:

• cointelegraph.com
• cointelegraph.com - 2
• bangkokpost.com
• investing.com
• coindesk.com

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