South Korea held an emergency meeting on virtual currencies and announced relevant measures on Friday

Summary: According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea held an emergency meeting on cryptocurrency and will announce measures on cryptocurrency trading on Friday. South Korea is one of the most active and largest Bitcoin markets in the world. The government is highly concerned about bubbles. Other media previously reported that South Korea is considering taxing Bitcoin earnings, or even restricting or completely banning Bitcoin trading.

South Korea held an emergency meeting on cryptocurrency and will announce measures on cryptocurrency trading on Friday, a South Korean central bank official said on Wednesday, according to Yonhap News Agency. Earlier, other media reported that South Korea was considering taxing Bitcoin gains and even restricting or completely banning Bitcoin trading.

Virtual digital currency transactions, including Bitcoin, are popular in South Korea, making it one of the most active and largest Bitcoin trading markets in the world. Mati Greenspan, an analyst at trading platform eToro, estimates that about 21% of the world's Bitcoin trading volume occurs in South Korea.

From housewives to college students and office workers, ordinary Koreans are entering the Bitcoin market. Wall Street News previously mentioned that Tony Lyu, founder and CEO of Korbit, a Korean digital cryptocurrency exchange, said that this investment topic spread very quickly in Korea. Once people start investing, they hope that everyone can join in and push up the price together. The scale of virtual currency investment in Korea has always been large, and it is basically a community investing together.

However, the South Korean government is very worried about this Bitcoin bubble.

After the price of Bitcoin surged 21% in a week last month, South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon publicly stated that it was time for the government to take action, saying that "if it is not stopped, some serious pathology may occur."

According to South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo, Choi Jong-kyu, chairman of the Financial Services Commission of South Korea, said on Monday, "I don't think Bitcoin transactions are financial activities. It is not institutionalized and cannot be regarded as a real currency."

In September this year, South Korea joined the ranks of those cracking down on virtual digital currencies, stepped up regulatory scrutiny of such assets, banned initial coin offerings (ICOs) and their margin trading, and banned the sale of all virtual digital currencies.

Since CBOE Bitcoin futures were listed for trading earlier this week, South Korean financial media Business Korea reported that the Financial Services Commission of South Korea issued a directive prohibiting securities companies from engaging in Bitcoin futures trading, and Bitcoin cannot be the subject of futures trading.

The report also quoted a South Korean securities industry official as saying: "This is the first time that South Korean authorities have banned the trading of a specific asset. It seems that they made this decision because they are worried that the situation of Bitcoin will get out of control before it is included in the regulatory scope."

Just last week, Bloomberg quoted South Korean regulators as saying that the South Korean government is discussing with various departments to set up a virtual currency working group to propose a strict regulation plan for virtual currencies as soon as possible to jointly deal with virtual currency issues. The country’s Ministry of Justice will take the lead in negotiating with relevant departments to formulate a regulatory strategy and consider imposing taxes on cryptocurrency trading profits. The current discussion is how to collect cryptocurrency trading data.

Choi Jong-kyu said on Monday that the committee is considering tightening regulations and restricting or even banning all Bitcoin transactions to prevent the bubble from continuing to expand.