Everyone trading bitcoin in South Korea will now have to identify themselves, in new regulation that endangers one of the cryptocurrencies' most central principles.
The regulation is wide-ranging and threatens one of the core parts of bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies have become popular largely because they allow for entirely anonymous transactions, meaning that people can use them to buy and sell illicit things like drugs or computer viruses without being traced.
But it is not as dramatic as it might have been. Initially, senior government ministers had suggested they might ban trading in bitcoin entirely.
