Over the past few days uncertainty has gripped investors in cryptocurrencies due to rumors that South Korean financial authorities were willing to ban crypto-currency exchanges, as happened in China.
These rumors arise because the government of the Asian country has imposed more and more regulations to these financial entities. In addition, a few days ago the chairman of the Financial Services Commission, Choi Jong-ku, said that they were studying the possibility of closing all the exchange offices, after several were sanctioned for deficiencies in their security.
However, Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon commented that "there are no intentions to prohibit or suppress the cryptocurrency market" and added that the immediate task of the government is to regulate exchange houses.
Within these efforts to put a brake on the cryptoactive market, which different countries of the world consider risky due to its volatility, the Korean Customs Service (KCS) has carried out an in-depth investigation and has discovered that almost 600 million dollars They have been exchanged illegally, used for currency exchange.
In the Asian nation, only registered and licensed brokers and banks can offer foreign exchange services. To avoid illegal practices, companies and individuals who transfer more than $ 3,000 at a time or more than $ 50,000 a year should explain to the authorities the reason for such transactions.
However, several companies were using the cryptoactives to bypass this prohibition. Although the KCS did not announce what legal actions it would take against these agents, it is very likely that they will lead to more regulations by the country's authorities.
REGULATIONS IN ASIA
These rumors negatively affect the market, since South Korea is one of the countries with the highest volume of cryptocurrency exchanges and, as it happened in previous months with China, the mere mention of the prohibition leads many investors to withdraw their assets, in if the regulations take effect.
In recent days the government imposed a law that requires all individuals or institutions that trade with cryptocurrencies to be properly identified and linked to bank accounts with real names, as well as the prohibition of minors under 18 to participate in the exchange of cryptoactives.
Japan, another country that also manages a significant volume of the global cryptocurrency market, has also begun to regulate more the national exchange houses, after the theft of more than 530 million dollars to the Coincheck exchange house, due to failures in its platform of security.