Thailand's securities regulator filed a criminal complaint on Thursday against Bitkub Online, the country's largest crypto exchange, along with two of its co-founders, alleging the company concealed a cyberattack that wiped out roughly 1.7 billion baht (approximately $48 to $50 million USD at period exchange rates) in digital assets belonging to its customers back in May 2021.

The Securities and Exchange Commission named Sakolkorn Sakavee, a co-founder and former chairman, and Thaweesap Rawan, a co-founder and former director, as individual defendants alongside the company. The charges rest on three sections of Thailand's Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Businesses (2018): Section 76, which bars submitting false information to regulators; Section 88(2), covering false statements in corporate filings; and Section 94, which addresses personal liability for report submissions. Each count can carry fines of up to one million baht and up to five years in prison, and the charges against multiple defendants across multiple sections mean penalties could stack.

What Regulators Say Happened

According to the SEC, Bitkub's directors submitted daily net liquid capital reports, known as Form Dor Jor 1 filings, to the regulator between May 10 and October 30, 2021. Those reports allegedly showed no meaningful drop in the company's asset base, despite an ongoing theft of 16 categories of digital assets. The company reportedly made customers whole by replacing the stolen assets from its own reserves before the end of October 2021, which is why users did not experience direct losses. The charges imply that quietly covering the shortfall does not substitute for truthful disclosure to the regulator. The agency said it "will closely monitor the case and continue to cooperate with relevant agencies" to enforce digital asset rules.

The alleged concealment took on a sharper edge in September 2025, when unverified claims about a Bitkub breach spread across Thai social media. At the time, the exchange told the public that its systems were "secure, stable and fully operational," as later reported. The SEC, reviewing activity at the same time, told investors to rely only on official announcements and found no evidence of a new system-wide breach. Neither response acknowledged the 2021 incident. The current criminal complaint suggests the regulator's own filings were kept in the dark about it as well.

David Lam, a researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, has observed that crypto exchanges serve as "primary gateways for scam flows and money laundering" across the region, a characterization that underscores why robust disclosure norms carry consequences well beyond any single enforcement action.

A Long Regulatory Record

Thursday's filing is the latest in a notable series of enforcement actions against Bitkub. The SEC fined the exchange 3.9 million baht in 2021 over service outages. In 2022, the regulator fined then-CTO Samret Wajanasathian roughly 8.5 million baht for insider trading and filed a civil suit seeking 24.2 million baht from Bitkub and four others over alleged wash trading, a practice where artificial buy-and-sell activity inflates reported volume. Token listing violations involving the exchange's native KUB token drew further sanctions in 2023. In 2025, the SEC suspended Bitkub's referral program to bring it into compliance with regulatory requirements. The pattern is now broad enough to raise due-diligence concerns for institutional partners, including custodians such as BitGo and Coinbase Custody, and for developers building on Bitkub's infrastructure.

KUB Token Takes the Hit

Bitkub's native token, KUB, was trading at $0.686 at time of publication, down 4.38% in the prior 24 hours. Its market capitalization sat at roughly $47.3 million, ranking it 439th by that measure on CoinMarketCap, with a circulating supply of about 68.97 million tokens. The token hit an all-time high of $17.24 on December 28, 2021, just two months after the company says it finished replacing all stolen assets. That peak came during a period of peak bull-market conditions and Bitkub's unicorn valuation. KUB has since fallen about 96% from that high and is down 58.2% over the past year alone, making it particularly sensitive to negative sentiment around the exchange.

Developers building on Bitkub Chain, the exchange's native blockchain infrastructure, face an added layer of uncertainty. Ongoing criminal proceedings against the parent entity introduce governance risk for projects and teams whose work depends on the chain's continued operation and institutional standing.

Why Southeast Asia Is Watching

The enforcement action carries weight beyond Thailand's borders. Most ASEAN crypto markets, including Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, are still formalizing their disclosure requirements for licensed exchanges. The filing implies that compensating customers in private does not meet regulatory standards for transparency, a distinction that will matter in neighboring markets as they build out their own frameworks.

The individual criminal charges are especially significant. Thailand's 2025 Technology Crime Prevention Act already created joint liability for exchanges in cases involving tech crime losses. Charging named former directors under criminal statutes, rather than fining the company alone, represents a harder edge of that framework. Regulators and policymakers in India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Kenya, all of whom are watching regional and international peers for precedent on exchange-level accountability, are likely to take note.

Bitkub has not issued a public statement in response to the complaint. The matter now sits with Thai authorities, and the SEC has indicated it will maintain active oversight throughout the process.