South Korea is stepping up its game with tough new rules for crypto exchanges to tackle illegal activities. The Financial Intelligence Unit is rolling out a system to pause transactions that look suspicious before they go through. They're also boosting their screening processes and ramping up anti-money laundering checks to kick out any exchanges that don’t meet requirements. This move comes as part of the country’s drive to keep a closer eye on the crypto scene and fight against bad practices. A recent report highlighted how serious South Korea is about tightening up regulations in the digital asset space, especially since they’ve already added more rules for virtual assets.
It would not be very head scratching anymore if the next of these stringent rules would be on the normal investors of the cryptospace where their regulators will begin to allow only individuals belonging to a higher income category.
They will declare that this is for the protection of the consumers, however, what they might be doing is they do not want normal people to have the peer to peer charcteristics that these cryptocoins are giving us. They want us to continue using their currency and their middlemen.
Tightening regulations is good for protecting new investors, as in the coming months there may be a high demand for cryptocurrencies and a higher possibility of fraud, but tightening them to a very high degree may hinder the development of technology, so it is a double-edged sword. I hope that the governments goal is to protect investors from the consequences of scammers or these fake volumes exchanges which may steal their investments.
Agreed tighter regulation sometime doesn't work in favour of the government. They can come as a backlash and promote illegal activities. Regulation are important but they can't be effective if proper resources are not in placed. This is what is happening in my country India, the government regulated local exchange and now have gone after international exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin l, OKX and others. They want these exchanges to comply with AML and provide details of users. Until these exchanges comply with the rules they have placed shadow ban on them by blocking their urls and hiding their apps on Play Store and App store.
Agreed if the regulations the government creates is truly for the protection of consumers. However, I would argue that the government does not care about the small minnows in the pond. I reckon much of these regulations are created on the direction of the rulers of the country who have funded political campaigns and who have placed the people they control on certain government positions.
Also, maybe in the beginning they will make it appear that they were created to protect the consumers. However, through lobby and bribes they always add new rules and new wordings that would give them more advantage and make the environment less fair for us.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/south-korea-s-ruling-party-mulls-bitcoin-etfs-as-election-promise-report/ar-BB1ixfwe
"South Koreas ruling People Power Party is contemplating significant changes in the countrys cryptocurrency landscape as part of its campaign pledges for the forthcoming general election in April.
Reports suggest that the party is considering lifting the ban on spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exploring avenues to allow institutional investment in cryptocurrencies, including initial exchange offerings (IEOs)."
As expected the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF has started having a ripple effect on other countries. South Korean ruling party claims that it is targeting to attract more investors in the crypto sector. The party is also planning to extend the tax exemption from crypto income. This policy change is targeted are targeting young voters in the forthcoming elections. However,. politicians cannot be trusted because the are inconsistent. They usually make good or viable promises during the campaign but they might change their stance immediately after the election is won.
These changes will affect to a greater extent spot Bitcoin ETFs and institutional investors, and this change is already regulated to the maximum by various laws. Non-custodial storage of cryptocurrencies and decentralized trading will be persecuted in many countries, regardless of the policy of spot Bitcoin ETFs.