South Korean authorities claim more than 15 crypto exchanges allowed customers to make illegal crypto transactions.
South Korea has become one of the most important cryptocurrency trading centers around the world.
In 2022 alone, the crypto retail transaction in South Korea rose by over 150%. It went from 3.2 trillion won (around $2.5 million)in 2021 to 8.2 trillion won($6.2 billion) in 2022.
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On Tuesday, March 7th, a local news report shared the Korean Customs Service figures to portray the popularity of cryptocurrencies in the country and their impact on South Korea's economy.
In 2017, under its FOREX Transactions Acts, South Korea began demanding the Financial Services Commission (FSC) take regulatory actions against companies involved in illegal crypto transactions. After five years, in 2022, the government hunted down more than 15 illegal crypto exchanges.
MEXC and KuCoin were included in the illegal crypto exchange list. The crypto transactions connected to these firms amounted to $2 billion.
It is worth noting that last year, law enforcement agencies confiscated a significant amount of money from illicit transactions in the country. More than 50% of those funds were seized through crypto transactions.
Hence, the data shows that although the crypto adoption in South Korea is high, the transactions are used for money laundering. These illicit crypto transactions also involved buying international virtual assets for local resell.
These resellers leverage the country’s strict rules limiting the market and sell these assets at very high prices to interested buyers.
In other news, South Korea has begun to revise its transaction rules under its FOREX Transaction Acts because of complaints about the policy’s limits. The revision has caused the country to start planning toward opening its Foreign Exchange market to international firms.
