Korean Government Decides to Monitor Market
People Power Party lawmaker Sung Il-jong said on April 19 that the virtual currency trading volumes on the four major local exchanges (Bithumb, UPbit, Korbit and Coinone) added up to 1,486.277 trillion won in the first quarter of this year. For reference, the annual trading volume was 357.3449 trillion won in 2020 as a whole.
The monthly trading volume is skyrocketing, too. Specifically, it was 292.1236 trillion won in January and then exceeded 463.15 trillion won in February and 730.99 trillion won last month. This is because the South Korean stock market is moving sideways these days. According to CoinMarketCap, the daily trading volume on the 14 exchanges that support KRW-based trading exceeded 24 trillion won in the afternoon of April 15. This month’s trading volume is almost sure to exceed last month’s.
Under the circumstances, the South Korean government decided to monitor the market more closely until June 30. The Financial Services Commission and financial companies are going to strengthen their monitoring of virtual asset withdrawal and the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit will share its data with the tax and investigation authorities.
In addition, the police are going to divide investigation units in order to cover different types of illegal acts while using more virtual asset tracking programs. The police will focus on SNS-based false information dissemination and investor attraction for fraudulent purposes. The Korea Fair Trade Commission is going to look into virtual asset operators’ terms of service so that unfair contracts can be corrected.
“The government’s measures focus on nothing but eradicating illegal acts, but what is necessary now is monitoring methodology to forestall financial market instability that can be caused by the virtual currency market now even larger than the stock market,” experts pointed out. “Virtual currencies are currently neither legal tenders nor financial instruments, and yet the trading volume is soaring,” the lawmaker commented, adding, “The government needs to look into those currencies’ impact on the domestic economy.”