The oldest bank in Thailand, Siam Commercial Bank [SCB], has thrown away its plans to purchase a majority stake in the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bitkub Online. According to its statement released on Thursday, the oldest bank’s decision was conducted due diligence exercise, which did not yield any irremediable issues; however, there were certain unresolved regulatory issues Bitkub was currently working on, which led to the termination of the transaction.
The statement read,
“Whilst the results of the due diligence exercise did not reveal any significant abnormal issues which are irremediable, Bitkub is currently in the process of resolving various issues as per the recommendations and orders of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Thailand, which are uncertain in terms of timeframe in resolving those issues. As a result, the Buyer and the Seller have agreed to terminate the Transaction.”
The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission levied heavy fines on the Bitkub crypto exchange in May for failing to comply with digital asset listing rules when adding KUB Coin, Bitkub’s native coin. Additionally, it received word of advice from the SEC in January 2021 to improve its platform after experiencing trading outages.
However, with uncertainties around the exchange functioning within the country, SCB had to step aside from the deal. As per reports, Bitkub stated that it agreed to terminate the sale so that the company could resolve pending issues with the regulators and assure that the operations were not affected.
Despite this, SCB noted that it remains “committed to their strategic plans to expand into businesses relating to blockchain technology and digital assets, which will play an important role in Thailand’s economy and financial industry.”