On August 31, the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission released a draft for public comments, proposing to allow licensed intermediaries to provide eligible overseas crypto derivatives to retail investors, high-net-worth investors, and ultra-high-net-worth investors. This does not mean that Thai residents can freely trade all overseas crypto futures or options; the retail sector will still be subject to restrictions on both products and platforms.

Multiple barriers set for retail access

According to the proposal, overseas crypto derivatives offered to non-institutional clients must be similar in core characteristics to digital asset derivatives that are permitted to be traded in Thailand. The key areas of comparison for regulation include underlying assets, maturity arrangements, leverage levels, delivery methods, and settlement structures.

This means that compliance of only overseas exchanges is not sufficient; the specific contracts themselves also need to pass similarity tests. If the product structure is more complex, or if the leverage is significantly higher than what is locally acceptable, licensed intermediaries will not be able to offer such products to retail customers.

Overseas exchanges also need to meet regulatory requirements.

The proposal requires that relevant overseas exchanges must adopt a central counterparty clearing mechanism, that is, the CCP clearing arrangement, in order to reduce the risk of direct default by trading counterparts.

At the same time, exchanges are also required to be regulated by qualified regulatory authorities. The criteria include that the regulator must be a Class A signatory to the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding of the International Organization of Securities Commissions, or that the exchange itself is a member of the World Federation of Exchanges. The Thai Securities Commission does not directly list a list of available countries, exchanges, or cryptocurrencies, but rather sets a set of admission criteria first.

Products that do not meet the requirements are only available to institutional investors.

If overseas crypto derivatives do not meet the retail access requirements, institutional investors are still allowed to participate in the proposal. The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission believes that institutional investors are better equipped to assess high leverage, price volatility, and settlement risks.

Current Thai regulations already allow licensed intermediaries, under certain conditions, to provide retail and high-net-worth clients with access to overseas derivative investment products similar to local ones. This time, separate conditions have been set for crypto derivatives mainly because there are significant differences in leverage, maturity periods, and settlement methods between related contracts overseas.

It is worth noting that it is still unclear whether perpetual contracts meet the similarity requirements. Since these products do not have a fixed expiration date and utilize a continuous funding rate mechanism, whether they can ultimately be included in the retail investment scope will depend on the official rules and the design of the local contracts.

Thailand is still designing local crypto derivatives

Earlier in 2026, Thailand had already included cryptocurrencies and digital tokens within the scope of assets that can be used as underlying assets under the Derivatives Act, paving the way for compliant futures and options. The relevant notification date was March 5th.

Currently, regulatory authorities are in discussions with the Thai Futures Exchange TFEX regarding local contract specifications, which are expected to include underlying assets, contract sizes, margin requirements, leverage, and settlement methods. As of September 1st, cryptocurrency futures or options have not yet appeared in the TFEX public product catalog.

Since the local contract has not yet been implemented, there are still practical operational issues regarding how overseas products can be compared with Thai local products. Regulators may need to first complete or basically clarify the contract framework of TFEX before licensed intermediaries can determine which overseas products meet the requirements.

Comments are open until September 30th.

The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission stated that investors, intermediary institutions, banks, and digital asset firms can submit their feedback before September 30. The main issues for soliciting opinions include two points: first, whether non-institutional investors should be allowed to participate when they meet all the conditions; second, whether institutional investors should be permitted to access products outside of these conditions.

After the feedback collection period is over, regulators can modify the plan based on the feedback and then proceed with the final revision. As of now, no official effective date has been announced, nor have any specific cryptocurrencies, exchanges, brokers, or derivative contracts been approved.