7 NOV 2026 — Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on 5 November that it had filed a criminal complaint against BG Limited, the company it names as the provider of the Bitget crypto exchange. The SEC alleges the company ran a digital asset exchange for Thai users without a licence. The regulator has also passed the platform's details to the MDES, Thailand's Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, and says the public will be unable to reach Bitget's website, its other domains and its app from 5 December 2026.
According to the SEC's release, Bitget ran a fee-charging trading system during 2022-2025, offered a Thai-language website that could show values in baht, and courted users through Thai-language accounts on X, Telegram and TikTok. The complaint, lodged with the Economic Crime Suppression Division, cites sections 26 and 66 of the 2018 Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Businesses. It also covers an individual who, the SEC says, promoted Bitget's services on a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. We are not naming him.
A complaint is an allegation. The SEC's own release says the case passes first to an inquiry official for investigation, then to the public prosecutor, then to the courts. No court has ruled. Bitget's English press-release blog and announcement centre carried no statement on the complaint when we checked on 7 November.
Two complaints, one month's notice each
The Bitget case follows one filed a month earlier against the operator of VCEX. Read side by side, the two releases describe the same process on almost the same timetable.
| Bitget | VCEX | |
|---|---|---|
| Operator, as the SEC names it | BG Limited | Assure Technology Co., Ltd. |
| Named in the complaint | BG Limited and one individual | Assure and related persons, five in all |
| Conduct period the SEC cites | 2022 to 2025 | 24 December 2021 to 2 September 2022 |
| Complaint filed | 5 November 2026 | 7 October 2026 |
| Access blocked from | 5 December 2026 | 7 November 2026 |
| Days from complaint to block (our count) | 30 | 31 |
| Advice to users | Consider acting on assets held on the platform before the block | Consider withdrawing or transferring assets before 7 November |
By our count, from 5 November to 5 December is 30 days, and from 7 October to 7 November is 31, so in each case users got one calendar month. A third case this year ran to the same timetable. The law firm Tilleke & Gibbins described a complaint filed on 20 February against an overseas platform and the local broker it worked through, with access expected to be cut from 22 March, which is 30 days.
The blocking power is recent. A second SEC release on 5 November, a reminder to VCEX users two days before their deadline, says the Royal Decree that lets the MDES order unlicensed platforms blocked has been in force only since 13 April 2025. The VCEX conduct cited in the October complaint ended in September 2022, more than four years before it was filed.
Neither release says how many Thai users each platform had, how much they held there, or what becomes of assets left after a block. The SEC warns only that users of unlicensed operators "will not be protected under the law".
A licensed Thai exchange in the works
Bitget is already trying to enter Thailand the licensed way. On 20 October it announced a planned purchase of GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand), which runs a licensed exchange and brokerage in Bangkok and belongs to Japan's GMO Internet. The buyer is BTGT Management (Thailand) Ltd., in which Bitget holds an interest. Bitget said completion depends on regulatory approval, and that Thai users would get its trading platform once the purchase is complete and regulators have approved the new owner. "Building a presence in a market requires local expertise, an understanding of the regulatory environment and a long-term commitment to the market," said Gracy Chen, Bitget's chief executive.
GMO's own disclosure of 24 September did not name Bitget. It describes BTGT as a company set up on 22 September whose major shareholders "will comply with the approval of major shareholders regulation of the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission". So the buyer must satisfy shareholder rules set by the same regulator that filed the complaint. On 30 October GMO moved the scheduled transfer date from 31 October to 30 November, citing approval procedures with Thai regulators. That date falls five days before the block. Neither GMO nor the SEC has linked the deal to the complaint, and we draw no conclusion about it.
The Thai exchange has been losing money. GMO's figures show net losses of about THB 115.0 million in 2023, THB 100.0 million in 2024 and THB 87.6 million in 2025, when net sales were about THB 11.0 million. That is roughly THB 302.6 million over the three years. The price Bitget's vehicle is paying was withheld at the buyer's request.
The complaint lands six weeks after Bitget lost about $388 million from its hot wallets on 24 September, a loss it said its protection fund would cover.
