See you soon, Thailand! Thai friends, you’ll soon be able to access Binance’s Thai crypto exchange, called Gulf Binance by next year.

• Who’s getting in early? They’ve initially launched as an invite-only exchange and plan to launch publicly in early 2024.

What they have to offer. They’re a digital asset exchange and digital asset brokerage for cryptocurrencies and digital tokens.

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⏮️ A little rewind

In good company? This is a joint venture with a unit of Gulf Energy Development. Gulf Energy is one of the biggest businesses in Thailand and is run by Thai billionaire Sarath Ratanavadi.

• They reached an agreement on the JV in early 2022.
• They’re here to bring together Binance’s expertise in digital assets with Gulf’s deep local expertise.

Ma, I got my license(s)! In May this year, they got their Digital Asset Operator Licenses from Thailand’s Ministry of Finance. And yes, they’ll be regulated by Thailand’s SEC.

They said yes. This month, they got approval from Thailand’s SEC to start operations, based on a translated filing from

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👀 Who’s in the game?

According to CoinGecko, the Thai market is largely dominated by Bitkub.

• Bitkub recently raised $17.8M after a scrapped M&A deal and a two SEC fines (one to the CTO and one to Bitkub).

On rocky ground. After Bitkub, the second spot in the market is held by Zipmex, which is active in Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia.

• Zipmex filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022. They’ve been restructuring and got slapped with a few fines as well.
• They were set to have a $100M VC buyout, but the investor missed their deadline and later proposed to only pay Zipmex’s creditors 10-20% of what was owed.
• Moratorium proceedings are still ongoing and Zipmex’s future is still unclear.

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🔍 Zooming out

Regulatory pressure has been on the rise with Binance. So, they’ve slowly been getting licenses in markets globally, just like it has in Thailand with Gulf Binance.

They have also been acquiring exchanges that already have licenses, like in Indonesia with Tokocrypto and in Japan with Sakura Exchange Bitcoin.