South Korean Finance Watchdog Has ‘No Plans’ to Regulate Bitcoin Trading

The governor of a South Korean financial regulator has said it has “no plans” to supervise bitcoin trading, according to a report.

In remarks made to reporters today, Choe Heung-sik, chief of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), said that, since his agency does not view cryptocurrencies as “legitimate currency,” the FSS does not intend to supervise trading of the digital assets.

According to a Korea Times report, Choe added the South Korean government believes that cryptocurrencies are used in speculation, not as payment tools. As a result, the watchdog considers that cryptocurrencies are not financial products, nor is trading them a financial service.

He said:

“Though we are monitoring the practice of cryptocurrency trading, we don’t have plans right now to directly supervise exchanges. Supervision will come only after the legal recognition of digital tokens as a legitimate currency.”

The watchdog head’s comments come amid growing popularity of cryptocurrency trading in South Korea, and may have been prompted by the recent outage of major domestic exchange Bithumb, which recently experienced a technical outage that reportedly lost traders billions of won.

Seoul image via Shutterstock