Thailand’s SEC put USDT and USDC on its approved crypto list

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission added Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC to its designated list of cryptocurrencies effective March 16, 2025, expanding the assets that regulated businesses could use in specified exchange and digital-token transactions.

The operative development was narrower than a blanket legalization of stablecoin payments. Under Notification No. Sor Jor. 9/2568 and its appendix, the two dollar-linked tokens became eligible for roles defined by Thailand’s digital-asset framework: digital-token issuers could accept them as consideration, initial coin offering portals could receive them from investors or issuers in transactions, and licensed digital-asset exchanges could use them in trading or exchange pairs.

That distinction mattered. The notification changed what regulated market operators were permitted to support; it did not designate USDT or USDC as legal tender, license their issuers as Thai financial institutions, guarantee redemption at one U.S. dollar or require every licensed exchange to list either token.

A wider set of settlement assets

Before the amendment, the SEC’s designated list named Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Stellar, along with cryptocurrencies used in programmable-payment testing under the Bank of Thailand’s enhanced regulatory sandbox. Adding USDT and USDC gave licensed venues and token-offering infrastructure access to assets designed to track the U.S. dollar rather than fluctuate like conventional crypto assets.

For market structure, that was significant because a base trading asset sits on one side of a trading pair. Allowing regulated exchanges to use USDT and USDC in that role could reduce the need to route every crypto transaction through a volatile asset. It also gave issuers and ICO portals two additional forms of consideration within the regulated process.

This was regulatory permission, however, rather than proof of immediate implementation. The surviving documents do not establish which Thai exchanges offered new pairs on March 16, what liquidity those pairs attracted or whether customer behavior changed. No volume, price or market-share claim is therefore attached to the effective date.

Consultation preceded the change

The SEC had published the proposal for consultation before adopting the final notification. Its consultation paper said Thai digital-asset operators and other stakeholders had asked the regulator to update the list. The agency identified business flexibility, liquidity and risk as relevant considerations and specifically noted that it would monitor regulatory developments affecting USDT outside Thailand.

On March 6, 2025, the SEC announced that most consultation respondents supported the amendment and confirmed that the revised list would take effect on March 16. The formal notification and attached list provide the controlling primary record for the date and scope; the announcement explains the regulator’s stated rationale in English.

The process is important to the chronology. March 16 was not the date on which the policy was first disclosed. It was the date an already announced and finalized regulatory change became effective.

What the approval did not establish

Inclusion on an eligible-cryptocurrency list did not eliminate issuer, custody, blockchain, liquidity or redemption risks. Both tokens were intended to maintain dollar parity, but that design objective was not a government guarantee. The notification also did not independently assess the composition or sufficiency of either issuer’s reserves.

The measured interpretation for March 16, 2025, is therefore institutional rather than promotional: Thailand opened defined parts of its regulated digital-asset infrastructure to the two stablecoins. Whether operators adopted that permission, and on what commercial scale, required evidence beyond the effective rule itself.