The Philippines’ crypto exchange rules stopped being theoretical on March 18, when the Bybit app quietly disappeared from the Philippine Google Play Store. Telecommunications providers PLDT and Smart confirmed shortly after that they were blocking Bybit’s website too, acting on an order from the National Telecommunications Commission. Existing account holders can still log in and withdraw funds, but new sign-ups and app downloads are gone. For an exchange that once ranked among the most popular in the country, it’s a quiet but unmistakable enforcement moment eight months in the making.
The rules behind the block took effect on July 5, 2025, when the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Memorandum Circular Nos. 4 and 5, known collectively as the Crypto Asset Service Provider or CASP Rules, kicked in. Any platform offering, promoting, or facilitating access to digital asset trading in the Philippines, from spot exchanges to derivatives venues, now has to register as a Philippine stock corporation with at least 100 million pesos in paid-up capital, excluding crypto assets themselves. A month after the rules took effect, the SEC issued a public advisory naming ten offshore platforms it considered unregistered and therefore non-compliant: OKX, Bybit, MEXC, Kucoin, Bitget, Phemex, Coinex, Bitmart, Poloniex, and Kraken.
Atty. Paolo Ong, an SEC assistant director, was blunt about the intent behind the framework when it was issued: ‘The rules were issued to support local players and go after those unregistered ones,’ he said, adding that the CASP framework gives the commission’s enforcement team more teeth to be assertive. The standard the SEC is applying is straightforward, according to Ong: a Philippine-registered corporation with a primary SEC license is the baseline for legally marketing crypto assets to Filipinos, full stop.
What followed was a slow-motion but steady escalation rather than an overnight ban. Binance’s app was pulled from the Philippine Google Play Store first, following an SEC request relayed directly to Google. Bybit read the room by the end of 2025 and proactively halted new user registrations from the Philippines rather than wait to be forced out, a move that let it keep serving existing customers without directly defying the SEC. That compliance-by-attrition approach held until March, when the NTC order added a website block on top of the already-dead app listing, closing off the last easy on-ramp for new Filipino users trying to reach the platform directly.
The SEC’s enforcement toolkit extends well beyond app store takedowns. The commission can issue cease-and-desist orders, request blocking of websites and apps, and file criminal complaints under the Securities Regulation Code and the Financial Products and Services Consumer Protection Act. It has also been coordinating directly with Google, Apple, Meta, and TikTok to pull unauthorized marketing content for unregistered platforms, cutting off the paid-ad and influencer-marketing channels that offshore exchanges have historically used to reach Filipino retail traders.
None of this means crypto trading itself is restricted in the Philippines. The SEC has been explicit on that point since the rules were first announced: crypto trading remains legal, and Filipinos can still access it through properly registered platforms. What’s changed is the list of platforms that qualify. Coins.ph and PDAX, both BSP-licensed and SEC-registered, are the most obvious beneficiaries of offshore competitors being pushed out, and it would be a reasonable bet that both saw a measurable bump in new signups in the weeks after Bybit’s Google Play removal, even if neither has published numbers confirming it.
For founders building anything crypto-adjacent in the Philippines, the CASP framework is now a real cost of doing business rather than a compliance box to eventually get around to. The 100-million-peso paid-up capital requirement alone puts formal exchange licensing out of reach for most early-stage teams, which is likely to push Philippine crypto startups toward two paths: building on top of an already-licensed VASP or CASP rather than seeking a standalone license, or focusing on products, like wallets, portfolio trackers, or DeFi interfaces, that sit adjacent to trading rather than facilitating it directly and triggering the registration requirement in the first place. Either path is a meaningfully different starting point than the fairly permissive environment Philippine crypto founders operated in as recently as 2024.
The bigger signal here, for founders and investors watching the broader Southeast Asian regulatory picture, is that the Philippines has moved from writing rules to actually enforcing them within about eight months, a faster and more consistent follow-through than several regional peers have managed. Whether that consistency holds as more offshore platforms test the SEC’s resolve, or as Filipino traders find workarounds through VPNs and unofficial app sideloading, will determine whether this becomes a durable model for the rest of the region or just a headline moment that fades once the news cycle moves on.
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