Bitget plans to buy GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand), the Bangkok company that runs the licensed Z.com EX exchange, Bitget said in a release datelined Victoria, Seychelles, on 20 October 2026. The purchase goes through BTGT Management (Thailand), a holding company in which Bitget says it has an interest. No price has been disclosed. The seller, Tokyo-listed GMO Internet, has scheduled the share transfer for 31 October, and the deal still needs approval from Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This is a planned acquisition, not a completed one. Bitget calls it a proposed transaction whose completion depends on “applicable regulatory approval, among other conditions”. Once the change of control is approved and the deal closes, Bitget says it intends to bring its trading platform to Thai users “in accordance with applicable Thai regulations”.
Until then, nothing changes for Thai residents. Bitget’s own terms of use still list Thailand among the countries it does not serve.
Chief executive Gracy Chen framed the move as groundwork rather than a launch. “Building a presence in a market requires local expertise,” she said in the release, adding: “Our priority is to develop the right operational foundation.” Bitget gave no date for a Thai launch and named no products. It also declined to tell Cointelegraph how large its stake in BTGT Management is.
The Bitget Thailand acquisition is signed on paper, not closed
The clearest account of the deal comes from the seller. In a disclosure notice dated 24 September 2026, GMO Internet (TSE Prime: 4784) said its board had resolved that day to sell every share of GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand): 7,349,446 shares in total. GMO Internet holds 3,603,460 of them directly; the other 3,745,986 sit with its subsidiary GMO-Z.com Holdings (Thailand). After the sale, the GMO group would own none of the exchange.
Apart from the board vote itself, every step in the filing’s timetable is marked as scheduled. The share transfer agreement was due to be signed on or about 24 September. The transfer itself is “expected on October 31, 2026”. GMO expects a “minimal” effect on its consolidated results for 2026.
The price is missing. GMO says it is withholding the amount “at the request of the buyer” and describes it only as a figure that “appropriately reflects market pricing”. Bitget’s release does not give it either.
FX News Group’s headline on 20 October said Bitget “acquires” the exchange. Neither party says the deal is done. Both documents describe a deal that is agreed but conditional, with a regulator still to sign off.
Z.com EX: a licensed exchange that lost money every year
The target is small. GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand) was set up on 20 July 2018 and opened Z.com EX on 22 February 2021, after receiving authorisation from the Thai SEC and the Ministry of Finance to run a digital asset exchange, according to GMO’s launch announcement. It listed six coins at launch: BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, BCH and XLM. Cointelegraph reported on 20 October that the SEC still lists the company among its licensed digital asset exchange operators. The release from Bitget calls it “a licensed digital asset exchange and brokerage” without naming the licence type or number.
Its accounts show why GMO wanted out. Revenue never reached THB 15 million a year, while the operating loss was several times larger in each of the past three years.
| GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand), THB | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | 1.13 million | 13.2 million | 11.0 million |
| Operating loss | -115.3 million | -101.7 million | -74.2 million |
| Net loss | -115.0 million | -100.0 million | -87.6 million (about 400 million yen) |
| Total assets | 114.0 million | 424.3 million | 451.0 million |
| Net assets | -11.1 million | 9.0 million | 11.4 million |
Source: GMO Internet filings of 18 March and 24 September 2026. FY2025 combines January to March, when the company sat under GMO Internet Group, and April to December under GMO Internet. Yen conversions are GMO’s, at THB 1 = 4.57 yen.
Net assets of THB 11.4 million against total assets of THB 451 million leave little equity, and at the end of 2023 equity was negative. The company has leaned on its parent: share capital stood at THB 605.4 million in the March filing and THB 735.4 million in the September one, and GMO Internet still had THB 80 million (about 370 million yen) in loans outstanding to it at the time of the September filing, down from about 1 billion yen in March. Its chief executive is Toshiyuki Namiki.
A buyer paying for this company is not paying for earnings. What it gets is an existing licence, an operating team in Bangkok and the exchange’s customers.
BTGT Management, a buyer incorporated on 22 September
The buyer named in GMO’s filing is “BTGT Management (Thailand) Ltd. (or its designated entity at the completion of the share transfer)”. The filing does not mention Bitget. It describes an investment holding company with offices on the 47th floor of Empire Tower in Bangkok, share capital of THB 2 million, net and total assets of THB 500,000, and a date of establishment of 22 September 2026, two days before GMO’s board approved the sale.
GMO says the company was “newly established for the purpose of acquiring the business in question and expanding into crypto-asset-related business in Thailand”. Its listed director is Chen Siyu. Two companies own it: BTGT Investment Holdings Limited with 51% and BTGT Holdings Limited with 49%.
Who stands behind those two shareholders is not public. Bitget says it acts through “its interest” in BTGT Management, without saying how large that interest is. Nothing in the documents published so far shows whether Bitget controls the buyer or holds a minority stake alongside other investors.
Thai SEC approval hinges on the major-shareholder rules
GMO’s filing points to the specific test the deal has to pass. It says the buyer’s major shareholders “are in the digital assets business” and will comply with the Thai SEC’s regulation on the approval of major shareholders.
Those rules were tightened this year. According to a note by the law firm Tilleke & Gibbins dated 10 March 2026, a Ministry of Finance notification effective 21 February and SEC rules effective 4 March widened who counts as a major shareholder of a licensed securities or digital asset business. The threshold is more than 10% of voting rights, held directly or indirectly, or control, meaning the power to appoint or remove at least half the board or to control a majority of votes. The rules look through holding chains, so the people at the top of a structure count as well as the company on the share register.
In practice, the licensed operator files the application, and the SEC screens the prospective major shareholder before approving it. For BTGT, a look-through review would reach whoever owns BTGT Investment Holdings and BTGT Holdings. The SEC has not published a statement on this transaction, and no source found for this piece gives a typical approval timeline. Whether the 31 October date holds is an open question.
Buying a licence does not make a cross-border platform legal
Since mid-2025 the Thai SEC has been pushing offshore exchanges out of the country. On 29 May 2025 it said Bybit, OKX, 1000X, CoinEx and XT.com would be blocked from 28 June 2025 for operating without a licence, The Block reported. Bitget was not on that list. On 20 February 2026 the SEC filed a criminal complaint against a local licensed broker and an unnamed overseas platform it said had run an exchange for Thai users across the border since 2023 without the required licence, according to Tilleke & Gibbins.
The law firm’s reading of that case is that an offshore platform cannot use a local licensee as a front. That is an analysis by a law firm, not an SEC statement about Bitget, but it frames the main question for this deal: Bitget says it wants to “introduce its trading platform” to Thai users, while the licence belongs to the Thai company and has to be run under Thai rules. How the two will fit together has not been explained by either side.
Thai active crypto accounts fell by more than half from 2024, MGR Online reports
GMO Internet’s board decided on 18 March 2026 to leave Thailand, either by selling its shares or by dissolving and liquidating the company. The March filing cited “the environment of the digital asset market in Thailand” and warned of a possible bad-debt loss of up to about 1 billion yen on its loan, in its non-consolidated accounts only. GMO Internet had itself taken the Thai business over from its parent, GMO Internet Group, in March 2025.
GMO gave no figures. Later SEC data, as reported by the Thai outlet MGR Online on 15 August, show how the market has gone since: in July 2026 there were about 121,000 active accounts, down 21.82% on the month and more than 54% below the 265,000 counted in 2024. Average daily trading value was THB 1,378 million, down 27.13% from June. Customer assets stood at THB 61,733 million, against THB 91,278 million in 2024. USDT made up about 66% of volume.
Seven exchanges held Thai licences in that report: Bitkub, Gulf Binance, Orbix Trade, TDX, Upbit, Waanx and Z.com. Fourteen brokers are licensed alongside them. Buying one of those seven gives a newcomer a licensed company without starting an application, although the new owners still need the SEC’s approval described above. Bitget, which says it has more than 125 million users, wrote in its release that it is evaluating expansion across Southeast Asia, without naming other countries.
The deal’s timeline began in March 2026
The sale process started six months before Bitget’s name appeared. These are the dates from GMO’s two filings and Bitget’s release.
- 18 March 2026: GMO Internet’s board decides to leave Thailand by sale or liquidation.
- 22 September 2026: BTGT Management (Thailand) is incorporated.
- 24 September 2026: GMO’s board approves the sale to BTGT and publishes its notice; the agreement is scheduled to be signed the same day.
- 20 October 2026: Bitget announces the planned acquisition and its interest in BTGT Management.
- 31 October 2026: scheduled date for the share transfer, subject to approval.
GMO’s notice was public from 24 September but did not name Bitget. Why Bitget waited until 20 October to announce its role has not been explained.
Cointelegraph’s headline placed the announcement “weeks after” the $388 million theft from Bitget’s hot and warm wallets, which began at 18:31 UTC on 24 September, the day of GMO’s board vote. That is a coincidence of dates. Neither Bitget, GMO nor Cointelegraph connects the hack to the purchase, and the sale had been on GMO’s agenda since March.
Thailand is still on Bitget’s prohibited list
Bitget’s terms of use, in the version marked “Last updated: October 20, 2026”, list Thailand among its prohibited countries, next to Austria, Belarus, Canada, Cuba, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, North Korea, Russia, Singapore, Sudan and the United States, among others. Cointelegraph noted the Thai ban in the version dated 16 October. The terms page was updated again on 20 October; this piece did not compare the two versions line by line.
The Thai plan comes while Bitget is leaving other countries. Russian and Belarusian users were told by email that trading would stop on 18 October and that they had until 21 October to withdraw. In France, according to Bitget’s notice of 16 January 2026, sign-ups stopped that day, new orders and deposits ended on 16 March, and all services closed on 31 March, when open positions were liquidated. Crypto left on French accounts worth more than 10 USDC was then moved to a third-party platform.
The pattern in both Thailand and Europe is the same: no service in a country until a local authorisation is in hand, whether through an application or through buying a company that already holds one. Our Bitget review covers the platform’s products and fees for the countries where it does operate.
No MiCA licence in the EU: Bitget’s application sits with Austria’s FMA
In Europe, Bitget has applied for authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) under MiCA through its entity Bitget EU, with Austria’s Financial Market Authority (FMA). In an update dated 2 July 2026, Bitget said it will offer crypto-asset services in the EU only once authorisation is granted and the remaining regulatory steps are complete, and that timing, scope and outcome remain “subject to the FMA’s assessment”.
Bitget does not appear in ESMA’s register of authorised CASPs. Coindaro downloaded ESMA’s CASP file on 20 October 2026 at about 10:50 UTC: it has 379 entries, the latest dated 15 October, and none for Bitget or a related company. Twelve Austrian firms are listed as authorised by the FMA, including Bitpanda, Bybit EU and KuCoin EU. ESMA updates this interim register in batches, so a very recent decision could reach it with a delay.
MiCA, the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets, lets a firm authorised in one member state serve clients across the bloc. Bitget is seeking that authorisation from scratch. Our guide to the MiCA regulation explains how authorisation and passporting work.
What the deal changes for exchange users today
For Thai residents, nothing yet. Bitget does not accept them, and it has given no date for opening. The Thai SEC has to approve the new owners first, and the deal has to close.
For Z.com EX customers, the open points are practical ones. Neither GMO nor Bitget has said whether the exchange keeps its name, its coin list and its accounts after a change of control, or whether customers will be moved to a Bitget-branded service.
For users elsewhere, the deal does not change Bitget’s status. A Thai licence, once acquired, covers Thailand. It does not give Bitget a MiCA authorisation or a way back into France, Germany or Austria. Anyone weighing an exchange can check its licence in the regulator’s own register for their country, one of the points in our guide to choosing a crypto exchange.
Open questions before and after 31 October
Several facts are still missing. The price has not been disclosed. The size of Bitget’s interest in BTGT Management, and the owners of its two shareholder companies, are not public. The Thai SEC has not commented on the transaction, and its review timetable is unknown.
The next fixed date is 31 October, when GMO expects the share transfer to take effect. If the SEC has not approved the new major shareholders by then, the schedule would have to move.
After that comes the harder step: what Bitget actually offers in Thailand, under which brand and through which entity, and whether the SEC accepts that set-up. Bitget has said only that it will act “in accordance with applicable Thai regulations”.