South Korea Charges Against Unregistered Crypto Exchanges, Post Bithumb Raid

• South Korea regulator FIU has taken enforcement action on unregistered crypto exchanges including KuCoin and BitMEX. 
• The regulator recently raided the headquarters of Bithumb due to fund misuse allegations.

Cryptocurrency has become the talk of the town in the past few months. While prices have lost their peak, the same cannot be said for other sectors. For instance, the US spot ETF sector has shown a significant boom over the past few days. Several altcoins are anticipated to see the launch of spot ETFs with filings and registrations happening every single day. 

Meanwhile, zooming out, in the east, intriguing aspects were observed in the last few days. Specifically, South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is now advancing enforcement actions against unregistered crypto exchanges as per recent reports. 

Previously, on March 20, the FIU conducted a raid at the Bithumb headquarters with allegations of funds misuse. Although Bithumb has not yet issued an official comment on the issue, the raid raised speculations. 

However, recently, the South Korea regulator has scrutinised crypto exchanges including BitMEX, KuCoin, CoinW, Bitunix and KCEX. The FIU plans to block access to these exchanges due to lack of proper registrations and non-compliance to the Specific Financial Information Act. 

How is the South Korea FIU’s Crypto Stance? 

Over the past year, the South Korea government has taken several measures to regulate crypto and digital assets. The government recently has begun considering launching an ETF to stay competitive within the market. 

Meanwhile, on the other hand, the FIU is following several regulatory measures over the past months. In February, the government announced plans to open institutional crypto trading in the coming months. Following this, in early March the FIU announced tightening of AML laws. 

Previously, in January Upbit faced scrutiny and was asked to pause operations briefly due to lack of KYC compliance. Meanwhile, as aforementioned, the lack of pricing in of the market activity by cryptocurrencies has left investors in uncertainty. 

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