Offrampt intel

Binance paused withdrawals after a $6.3 billion theft

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

Binance says it lost about US$6.3 billion on 29 and 30 October 2026, and paused deposits and withdrawals. Its first check points to one DevOps engineer's laptop as the way in. TRM Labs names North Korea's TraderTraitor group, the group the FBI named for Bybit's $1.5 billion loss in February 2025.

About $3 billion of the stolen coins were frozen on-chain: Tether froze over $1.5 billion of USDT, and Circle $800 million of USDC. Binance says it will cover all losses. Its SAFU reserve fund held about $1 billion at its 2024 disclosure.

In Thailand, Binance TH (Gulf Binance, licensed by the SEC) paused crypto withdrawals, while baht deposits, baht withdrawals and trading kept running, Thansettakij reported. The Thai SEC said it had found no significant impact on Thai customers' assets so far, and told licensed firms to check and report. Bitcoin traded under $77,000.

The long view: crypto is not actually crypto

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

Everything leaks. Chainalysis counted $3.7 billion stolen from crypto businesses in 2022, $1.7 billion in 2023, $2.2 billion in 2024 and over $3.4 billion in 2025. CertiK counts $2.68 billion from January to September 2026, before Binance's $6.3 billion in October. In August 2026, attackers drained over $130 million from Coldcard hardware wallets, offline ones among them, through a 2021 flaw that made seed phrases predictable.

On paper, the math gets cheaper to break. For RSA-2048, a common lock on the web, estimates of the quantum computer needed fell from 20 million noisy qubits (2019) to under 1 million (Google, May 2025) to under 100,000 (an Iceberg Quantum preprint, February 2026). For the 256-bit elliptic curve under bitcoin's keys, Google estimated in March 2026 under half a million physical qubits running for minutes, about a 20-fold cut from earlier estimates. Google's Willow chip, shown in December 2024, has 105 qubits.

Google's paper counts about 6.9 million BTC in addresses whose public keys are already exposed or reused. NIST's final guidance of 27 October 2026 deprecates RSA, ECDSA and EdDSA after 2030 and disallows them after 2035. Bitcoin's BIP-360, a draft that hides keys from long-exposure attacks, entered the proposals list in February 2026 and is not active.

Used as a tool, crypto moves value where a Thai bank account is out of reach, and the move takes minutes. Held for decades, it rests on locks with a date on them.

A Thai bank account depends on your visa, and one flag stops them all

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

No Bank of Thailand rule lists which visas a bank must accept; each bank sets its own. Kasikornbank opens savings accounts for any Non-Immigrant visa with documents for the purpose of stay, and not for the TR visa, short-stay visas or the DTV. SCB lists a passport and a work permit. Bangkok Bank opens accounts in person at a branch in Thailand, not from abroad. Since January 2025, Bangkok Bank has stopped opening accounts for short-stay visitors and counts DTV holders among them, The Phuket Express and The Thaiger reported in May 2025.

Since 1 August 2024, Thai banks share suspect data through the Central Fraud Registry: when a person is flagged, electronic channels stop on all of that person's accounts until verification. Since January 2025, banks can suspend outgoing transfers before any victim reports a loss. In September 2026, the Bank of Thailand and 11 industry bodies adopted a framework to tighten customer checks again.

Without a Thai account, crypto still reaches baht: on Offrampt's calculator on 30 October, the two crypto-card routes draw cash at a Thai ATM for 3% to 6% less than the mid-market rate.

Dollar stablecoins stopped growing this year

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

On DefiLlama's count, dollar stablecoins in circulation stood at $304.7 billion on 30 October 2025, peaked at $315.5 billion on 17 May 2026, and stand at $299.6 billion on 30 October 2026. In July, Forbes reported the fall after the May peak as the first in four years. June 2026 still set a volume record of $1.79 trillion.

USDT is 37% of the baht trading on Bitkub's own order book on 30 October; on other days of the past month it has been near half.

In Thailand the Bank of Thailand has screened abnormally large USDT trades since July 2026. In September the SEC proposed a 5 million baht daily cap per operator and an own-wallet rule for stablecoin transfers. On 30 October Tether froze over $1.5 billion of USDT taken from Binance.

Thai crypto rules: a new step about every four weeks

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

Offrampt's rules timeline holds 13 Thai changes from 31 October 2025 to 30 October 2026. The latest six: 2026-09-14: The OECD lists Thailand among jurisdictions starting crypto tax data exchanges (CARF) by 2028; 2026-09-11: The SEC proposes a 5 million baht daily cap per operator and an own-wallet rule for stablecoin transfers; comment closes 25 September; 2026-09-07: The SEC imposes civil sanctions on four people for manipulating trading volume of the SIX Network token; 2026-09-02: The SEC issues the crypto Travel Rule, effective 27 February 2027; 2026-09-01: The SEC names Tools for Humanity and its CEO as supporters of the unlicensed UNO app; Holdstation and UNO are to be blocked from 1 October; 2026-08-25: The Cabinet approves a draft Act amending the Digital Asset Decree, sending it to Parliament.

Two dates sit ahead: the Travel Rule takes effect on 27 February 2027, and Thailand starts sharing crypto tax data with other countries under the OECD's CARF by 2028.

Scam losses in Thailand: from 117 million baht a day to about 50 million

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

Royal Thai Police data put reported online losses at an average of 117 million baht a day in early 2024, and 65 million in February 2025, after the border cut-offs that month.

For January to June 2026, nearly 9 billion baht was lost across more than 170,000 cases, about 50 million baht a day. The average loss was above 52,000 baht a case, and Facebook was linked to over 61% of cases (Thailand Consumers Council).

The two series count in different ways, police reports against scam complaints, so the fall is a direction, not an exact rate.

Money home to Myanmar: 93% of senders use informal channels

2026-10-30T00:00:00+07:00

About 1.75 million Myanmar citizens worked in Thailand officially in October 2023 (AMRO). A study by the Institute for Strategic Policy, reported by Thai PBS World in September 2026, says 93% of Myanmar remitters in Thailand used informal channels (IOM's 2024 survey), 60% used hundi agents, and about 68% of Myanmar's informal remittances come from Thailand. Hundi costs about 2.5%, against about 10% at banks in the past. The kyat has lost about 80% against the dollar since 2021.

Myanmar's Labour Ministry ordered overseas workers in 2023 to send 25% of earnings home through approved banks at a fixed rate; one worker reported 2,940 kyat per dollar against a market rate of 3,500 (Radio Free Asia). In May 2024 the Central Bank of Myanmar warned against unregulated digital currencies and acted against hundi transfers made with USDT (Tilleke & Gibbins).

In Thailand, USDT trades on licensed exchanges from 16 March 2025, and the SEC's September 2026 proposal would limit stablecoin transfers to the customer's own verified wallets.