With the enforcement of the amendment to the Act on the Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information (Special Act) on March 25, the obligation to prevent money laundering of cryptocurrencies (virtual asset) operators has been strengthened.
As the government puts a grace period for the amendment until September 24, related businesses such as cryptocurrency exchanges are required to submit a business registration form to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in order to conduct cryptocurrency trading business.
In addition, on the 28th of last month, the government announced the ‘virtual asset transaction management plan’ that determined the cryptocurrency management system and the departments in charge of each field, announcing the strengthening of supervision and supervision of virtual asset operators from September 25th. Relevant businesses are skeptical. Some exchanges have started to ‘save the body’ by preemptively cleaning up insolvent cryptocurrency.
◇Upbit removes 5 types of cryptocurrency market pairs + 25 types of significant items
Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Korea, announced on the 11th that it would remove five cryptocurrencies from the KRW market fair and designate 25 cryptocurrencies as significant items.
Upbit has been delisting and designating significant stocks for cryptocurrencies that lack the technology and liquidity (cryptocurrency trading volume) of the project (cryptocurrency developer) to protect investors. Upbit, which has been designating investment items since 2019, has designated cryptocurrencies with double-digit numbers as significant items.
However, this is the first time Upbit has designated more than 20 significant stocks, and as famous cryptocurrencies are mixed among the five cryptocurrencies removed from the won market, the investment industry is in a so-called ‘mind-bung’. A representative example is the cryptocurrency ‘PayCoin’ issued by Danal Fintech.
‘Paycoin’, a simple payment service, rapidly expanded the actual use of cryptocurrency and quickly gained recognition among domestic investors. However, when Upbit announced that it would abruptly remove PayCoin from the KRW market, the market was also hit hard. On the 11th, the day of Upbit’s announcement, Paycoin, which traded at 1210 won (high), sank to 468 won (low) the next day (12th).
Danal Fintech immediately set out to appease investors. The company said, “This action was taken suddenly 30 minutes before the deadline for consulting application for acceptance of a report submitted to the financial authorities at 6 pm on the same day without prior notice or consultation.” “Upbit’s decision will not cause any major disruption to the business.” drew
Afterwards, as the fact that Paycoin was only removed from the Upbit KRW market and would continue to be traded in the Bitcoin market spread through the investor community, the selling trend also subsided.
◇ Small and medium-sized exchanges also followed Upbit to prepare for delisting
However, in the investment industry, it is predicted that most exchanges will follow the industry leader ‘Upbit’ to continue delisting cryptocurrencies so as not to be caught in the eyes of the financial authorities. In fact, small and medium-sized exchanges, such as Probit and Gdac, came up with measures similar to Upbit and supported some industry claims.
There was also an exchange that suddenly predicted delisting overnight. Coinbit announced at 10 pm on the 15th that it had ended (delisting) Δ8 cryptocurrencies and designated Δ28 cryptocurrencies as important items. Coinbit announced the delisting and designation of items of note for the first time through this notice.
The eight cryptocurrencies that are expected to be delisted are ‘Rex’, ‘Io’, ‘Pantheon’, ‘Yuppy’, ‘Dex’, ‘Proto’, ‘Dexter’ and ‘Next’. Transaction support will end at 8:00 pm on June 23rd. . The company decided to support the withdrawal service until 8:00 pm on June 29.
The reason for the delisting revealed by Coinbit is that it did not meet the internal transaction support screening criteria that evaluate global liquidity such as team competency, business communication and technology capabilities.
The 28 cryptocurrencies for which significant stocks have been announced are ‘Metroroad’, ‘Survey Block’, ‘Raon’, ‘Hera’, ‘Deacon’, ‘Hole in One’, ‘Neo Block’, ‘Crono’, ‘Coupon Chain’, ‘Charon’, ‘Face Token’ Pike’ ‘Pairchain’ ‘D.O’ ‘Galaxy Pie’ ‘Gel Pay’ ‘Kyper’ ‘S Lab’ ‘Planet’ ‘Xpok’ ‘Almond’ ‘Scoin’ ‘Hilet’ ‘Davion’ ‘iFuel’ ‘Mbridge’, ‘State’ and ‘Aquarium’.
The cryptocurrency will be delisted if it does not meet the internal evaluation criteria evaluated by Coinbit in the final evaluation on June 23rd.
◇ Self-issued exchange tokens are also listed one after another… “Beware of artificial measures”
With the addition of a policy to ‘prohibit the act of brokering or arranging for the sale or exchange of virtual assets issued by virtual asset business operators and the exchange’s executives and employees in their own exchanges’ was added to the virtual asset transaction management plan. Cases of delisting self-issued cryptocurrency are also detected.
Huobi Korea announced on the 15th that it would close the ‘Huobi Token’ transaction in line with the virtual asset transaction management plan announced by the government on the 15th. Huobi Token is an exchange token (cryptocurrency) issued by Huobi Global, a Chinese exchange and parent company of Huobi Korea, in January 2018.
Park Si-duk, CEO of Huobi Korea, said, “We are continuously preparing an internal reorganization plan in line with the guidelines for managing virtual assets. “he emphasized.
As a small and medium-sized exchange, Gdac also announced the listing of its own exchange token, ‘Gdac Token’, and the delisting of exchange tokens issued by itself is expected to continue at the exchange level to reduce transaction fees.
However, there are voices pointing out the exchange and the government over the sudden decision of the exchange that does not consider investors. Kim Hyung-joong, a special professor at Korea University’s Graduate School of Information Security, said, “The delisting should be left to the market, not artificial. not,” he criticized.
He continued, “There seems to be a lot of opposition from cryptocurrency investors and developers (which has been delisted and designated as a significant stock) over this measure, so it seems that other exchanges are not easily able to keep up.” “I think it will have a negative impact on the development of the cryptocurrency industry in Korea. I want the government to look into this issue with a master plan to make Korea the center of ‘Digital Wall Street’,” he added.
