Good news from South Korea. 12 days ago I wrote about how some exchanges had been raided by Tax agencies and police and up until now things had been a bit uncertain from the officials. There were rumors that South Korea was going to ban cryptocurrency trading in general as they believed it was gambling, but those were found to have been manufactured and some officials had been trading on inside information before releasing these rumors. After the inspections the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is also preparing anti-money laundering guidelines for cryptocurrencies.
Now the news has broken out that banks are again ready to provide services to exchanges but they want to be strict about people trading anonymously and eliminate virtual accounts on exchanges by enforcing them to use real names when signing up.
Regulations are coming and as we have seen with many other exchanges over this and last month they are requiring their costumers to verify so that no shady business can be had. The Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) also want the exchanges to share their data of their customers with them, quoting the FSC:
Banks are expected to introduce the system, which will require cryptocurrency exchanges to share users‘ transaction data with banks, late this month or early next month.
Using real names which enables exchanges and banks to Know your Customer (KYC) and being able to track transactions of block-chain assets somewhat it will make it easier for them to also tax the customers.
Some people may not like regulation and knowing that many who initially got into cryptocurrencies because of this "advantage" are not going to like these changes but I personally believe that regulation will be good for the potential long term of the currencies and technology. I also believe that these changes will make it more secure for investors who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting to make their moves into the technology.
Knowing that South Korea is a country with most of the trading volume these changes might get a lot of speculators and investors to trade into anonymous cryptocurrencies in an effort to hide their profits and/or wealth from taxation.
What do you readers think about this? Will this be the bottom of this year for the total market cap?
Sources 1, 2
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