Well it seems Thailand may be the first country to ban Bitcoin, at least according to an announcement by the Thai Bitcoin Exchange https://bitcoin.co.th/news/.

The excange has suspended business as

“senior members of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department advised that due to lack of existing applicable laws, capital controls and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets the following Bitcoin activities are illegal in Thailand:

Buying Bitcoins
Selling Bitcoins
Buying any goods or services in exchange for Bitcoins
Selling any goods or services for Bitcoins
Sending Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand
Receiving Bitcoins from anyone located outside of Thailand”

However there remains some debate on this issue. Questioning in particular the Banks powers to make law. A post on
techinasia.com claims that –

“Any type of currency enchange service in Thailand needs to get a license from the Bank of Thailand, according to the Exchange Control Regulations in Thailand whether it’s “real” money or not. That’s why Bitcoin Co. Ltd. needed to be authorized to operate, and since it didn’t have that authorization, it was forced to shut down.

Prasan Trairatworakun, Bank of Thailand’s governor, says that the bank hasn’t approved Bitcoin Co. Ltd. to do business in Thailand because the transactions that the company is involved in center around the exchange rate but are not an actual currency exchange (since bitcoin is not a physical currency).

Of course, this is something really new for Thailand and the explanation Prasan gave comes from old laws because we don’t have any rules to support electronic currencies. Therefore, since there are no applicable laws that can control or tax Bitcoins, they are de-facto illegal (for now).”

How this will effect other Bitcoin services in Thailand is yet to be seen.
At the time of posting Bahtcoin.com another popular Thai exchange continues to operate.