
In the hours of today night it was known that Bithumb, the largest exchange house in South Korea, was raided by the police and tax authorities of that country.
According to the Reuters news agency, a representative of Bithumb said that on Wednesday the exchange house was intervened by the tax authorities to do comptrollership in documents and accounting books. Other sources indicate that the investigators collected information of a financial nature and confiscated hard drives. The information is seconded by the agency YonhapNewsTV.
For its part, a spokesman for Coinone, another South Korean exchange house, said that its offices were also raided during this week, noting further that the local police forces have been investigating that exchange house during the last year, as they believe that They make illegal bets.
According to Hankyoreh's information, this exchange house was supervised this week by the authorities, who only asked questions about the size of the company, the number of employees and the capital gains of its activity.
The Korean news service SBS announced, in turn, that the Ministry of Justice of the Asian nation would be following its own agenda to supervise the exchange houses and regulate the markets of cryptoactive.
The ministry pointed to an episode in which a betting game called Sea Story became popular, leaving behind more than 1 million people disappointed and, in addition, pathological addicts to gambling and betting:
The Ministry of Justice considers that the crazy speculation with digital currencies will have a national impact 10 times higher than that of the Sea Story game. In one or two years the speculation bubbles will collapse and 3.3 million people can suffer damages by about 12 billion won. There is no reason to doubt about regulating cryptocurrencies.
Ministry of Justice of South Korea
In addition, they claim to have plans to legislate very soon the scope of cryptoactives to avoid the existence of illegal intermediaries in the framework of this week's discussions.
These measures may not have been so surprising for those affected, since for some time the government of South Korea has aroused interest on the subject of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. It has also identified the urgency of regulating exchange houses in one of the world's main markets, considering concerns about crimes such as the legitimization of capital in Asia's fourth largest economy.
In fact, last Sunday it was learned that the authorities would investigate all bank accounts registered in exchange houses to determine if their owners are involved.
This dynamic market has been characterized by holding higher prices in the cryptocurrencies that they market with respect to the rest of the world, which is why, unexpectedly, the website CoinMarketCap decided to set aside the exchange houses of South Korea from its price index and global markets.