The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has restricted deposits at Coins.ph, the largest crypto exchange in the Philippines, according to a CoinDesk report published on October 13, 2026. The curbs run through the exchange's main wallet operator, DCPay Philippines, and began in early October. Unlike a routine temporary suspension, the restriction is not time-bound, and people familiar with the matter say the alleged violations are serious enough to end with the exchange losing its license.
Neither Coins.ph nor the BSP responded to requests for comment before the report ran.
The alleged link to offshore gambling
The action centers on claims that Coins.ph served offshore gambling operators that the central bank had already pushed out of the regulated system. After the BSP tightened e-wallet access for gambling in 2025, several of those entities moved to Coins.ph, where they could reach crypto and stablecoins to pay offshore partners, according to the report.
That detail matters because it reframes the case. This is not a dispute over a late filing or a capital shortfall. It is an accusation that a licensed money-services firm became the payment rail for activity regulators had deliberately cut off elsewhere. One source described the potential fallout as "an earthquake" for the local crypto scene.
Compliance turnover adds to the picture. Three senior compliance figures left Coins.ph in 2026: chief compliance officer Lexi Herrera, anti-money-laundering transaction monitoring head Chris Beano, and money-laundering reporting officer Irish Calagui. The report does not tie those departures to a specific finding, so treat the sequence as context rather than cause.
A market leader with no easy substitute
Coins.ph is not a marginal player. It has more than 18 million registered customers and runs roughly $50 million in spot trading over a 24-hour window. Its heaviest concentration is in the on- and off-ramp layer: the exchange controls an estimated 75 to 80 percent of peso-to-stablecoin liquidity in the country.
That concentration is the real stakes here. When one venue handles most of the conversion between a national currency and dollar-pegged tokens, a freeze on that venue does not just inconvenience its own users. It narrows the main corridor Filipinos use to move between pesos and dollar-pegged stablecoins such as USDC and USDT. Remittance flows, a large part of the Philippine economy, often touch that corridor.
For anyone funding a card or wallet from a Coins.ph balance, the deposit restriction is the immediate pressure point. Deposits are blocked, which means topping up through that route is not an option while the curbs stand. Users holding balances on the exchange are exposed to the same counterparty question that surfaces whenever a custodial platform comes under regulatory strain: funds sitting on an exchange are claims on that exchange, not assets you directly control. That gap is the practical case for holding keys yourself through self-custody options rather than leaving spending balances parked on a single venue.
A wider regional pattern
The Coins.ph case fits a run of Asian regulators tightening their grip on crypto exchanges this autumn. South Korea moved to block 27 offshore exchanges, including KuCoin and MEXC, for operating without local registration. Binance cut services and delisted tokens in Brazil under local pressure. The common thread is enforcement aimed at platforms that regulators judge to be operating outside the rules they set, whether on registration, licensing, or the kind of activity they bankroll.
What separates the Philippine case is the market share at stake. Blocking a handful of foreign-run exchanges removes optional venues. Restricting the dominant domestic ramp touches the plumbing most local users rely on by default.
Overview
The BSP has frozen deposits at Coins.ph through DCPay Philippines over alleged ties to offshore gambling operators, and the restriction carries no end date. With more than 18 million users and control of an estimated 75 to 80 percent of peso-to-stablecoin liquidity, Coins.ph is the country's primary crypto on-ramp, which makes a possible license revocation a system-level event rather than a single-company problem. The exchange and the central bank have both stayed silent. Until there is an official statement, the confirmed facts are the deposit freeze, its open-ended nature, and the gambling-linked allegations at the core of the case.
