Bitkub review: Thailand’s licensed baht exchange, with a flat 0.25% fee and its own chain, but an alleged hidden 2021 hack, a criminal complaint, mobile-only withdrawals and poor support ratings.

Bitkub’s security story is dominated by a 2021 hack that it did not disclose to the regulator for years. On July 23, 2026 Thailand’s SEC filed a criminal complaint against Bitkub Online and two former directors, Sakolkorn Sakavee and Thaweesap Rawan, over a May 10, 2021 cyberattack in which 16 types of digital assets worth about 1.7 billion baht (about $47 million) were drained. The SEC alleges that daily net-capital reports (Form DA 1) filed from May to October 2021 showed no material change in assets, in breach of the Digital Asset Business Decree. Bitkub says customer assets were never affected because the co-founders replaced the stolen assets with their own money, and that the SEC verified customer holdings in September 2025 (Decrypt, Nation Thailand; neither claim is independently verified). Sakolkorn says he altered the filings alone, without telling other directors or staff, to avoid a bank run. More recently, Bitkub disabled web-based crypto withdrawals for Thai customers on February 10, 2026 after a user lost about 250,000 baht to suspected phishing malware, and urges Passkeys, face verification and 2FA. CoinGecko lists about $1.18 billion in exchange reserves and records a minor incident; we found no named proof-of-reserves auditor or attestation report.

Bitkub is licensed, which is rarer than it sounds, but its regulatory record is poor. Wikipedia says it was among the first exchanges to receive a digital asset licence from Thailand’s SEC in 2019, and CoinMarketCap lists Bitkub Online as licensed, with registered capital of 450 million baht. The record since then is rough: the SEC fined it in 2022 for breaching listing rules when it listed its own KUB coin, imposed a civil penalty on then-chairman Sakolkorn Sakavee for falsifying trading-volume information (BeInCrypto), and fined Bitkub Blockchain Technology 8.53 million baht (about $234,000) after an executive traded on inside knowledge of the SCBX deal (Finance Magnates). SCBX scrapped its roughly $500 million deal for 51% of Bitkub Online in August 2022 because Bitkub needed time to fix regulatory issues. The July 2026 criminal complaint is now with the Economic Crime Suppression Division, which received further evidence from the SEC on August 6, 2026; prosecutors have not yet decided whether to indict.

Bitkub charges a flat 0.25% maker and 0.25% taker fee on all cryptocurrencies, according to its own fee page. Deposits are free, and crypto withdrawal fees follow network costs and are updated four times a day. Traders Union notes that this compares with a market average of about 0.15% maker and 0.194% taker, and shows 0.10% at $5 million of turnover, while TradingFinder says the fee is flat regardless of volume. Older reviews cite discounts for holding the KUB token or referring friends; we could not confirm that these discounts are still offered. A bank-withdrawal fee of 20 baht appears in an older review (Captain Altcoin), and Thai banks may charge their own fees. There are no futures or margin fees because those products are not offered.

Coverage is wide for a domestic exchange, but the counts conflict. CoinGecko lists 351 coins and 358 pairs, with another snapshot at 357 and 362; TradingFinder says 163 cryptocurrencies, Traders Union 124 and Blockspot 301. All markets are quoted against Thai baht or USDT. On March 10, 2026 Bitkub became the first Thai exchange to list RLUSD against the baht, alongside a Ripple partnership, and it listed BitTorrent (BTT) in May 2026. There are no futures, perpetuals, margin or P2P trading, and CoinGecko records no margin trading. KUB Wallet now supports Ondo tokenised stocks for qualifying users, and Bitkub also runs the KUB Chain network.

The experience is local and mobile-first. Bitkub is built around Thai baht deposits and withdrawals, and a mobile app; Trading Brokers calls the design intuitive for beginners and experienced traders alike, though it also notes occasional slowdowns at peak demand. In January 2021 the trading system crashed three times in a month, which led the SEC to order Bitkub to fix platform issues and build a business-continuity plan (Bangkok Post). Since February 10, 2026, crypto withdrawals can only be made through the mobile app. A KYC processing delay and sudden service suspension in the past led Bitkub to compensate affected users. CoinGecko lists Bitkub’s 24-hour volume at about $122 million in one snapshot and $32 million in another, and the Bangkok Post reports that Binance TH has overtaken Bitkub, with its share of Thai trading falling from above 90% to roughly half or less.

Support ratings are poor. Traders Union, citing Trustpilot, shows 1.6 out of 5 on 27 reviews as of July 2026, with 96.3% of them one star; Gridinsoft recorded 1.7 on 23 reviews in October 2025. These are small samples. Trading Brokers (July 2026) says live chat is available 24/7 with rapid responses for common queries, and Bitkub lists a call centre on 1518, but those descriptions are not independent evidence of resolution quality. Past incidents suggest strain under pressure: the January 2021 outages drew heavy complaints and the SEC ordered improvements, and Bitkub later compensated users hit by a KYC delay and a sudden suspension. We found no external dispute channel beyond the SEC.

Bitkub has a larger ecosystem than most single-country exchanges, but parts of it have weakened. The group runs KUB Chain, an EVM-compatible proof-of-stake layer 1 (rebranded from Bitkub Chain in March 2025), with the KUB coin capped at 110 million tokens and about 69 million in circulation. KUB traded near $0.65 on July 27, 2026, about 96% below its December 2021 peak with a market value of roughly $45 million (an aggregated news report dated that day). A new KUB Wallet supports multiple networks, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Smart Chain. Bitkub partnered with Ripple in March 2026. The group shelved a Stock Exchange of Thailand listing in November 2025 and was reported to be weighing a roughly $200 million Hong Kong IPO, though the July 2026 complaint could complicate that.