South Korea is making ready to impose bank-level, no-fault legal responsibility guidelines on crypto exchanges, holding exchanges to the identical requirements as conventional monetary establishments amid the latest breach at Upbit.
The Monetary Providers Fee (FSC) is reviewing new provisions that might require exchanges to compensate clients for losses stemming from hacks or system failures, even when the platform isn’t at fault, The Korea Occasions reported on Sunday, citing officers and native market analysts.
The no-fault compensation mannequin is presently utilized solely to banks and digital fee corporations underneath Korea’s Digital Monetary Transactions Act.
The regulatory push follows a Nov. 27 incident involving Upbit, operated by Dunamu, through which greater than 104 billion Solana-based tokens, value roughly 44.5 billion received ($30.1 million), have been transferred to exterior wallets in underneath an hour.
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Crypto exchanges face bank-level oversight
Regulators are additionally reacting to a sample of recurring outages. Information submitted to lawmakers by the Monetary Supervisory Service (FSS) reveals the nation’s 5 main exchanges, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, reported 20 system failures since 2023, affecting over 900 customers and inflicting greater than 5 billion received in mixed losses. Upbit alone recorded six failures impacting 600 clients.
The upcoming legislative revision is anticipated to mandate stricter IT safety necessities, larger operational requirements and more durable penalties. Lawmakers are weighing a rule that might permit fines of as much as 3% of annual income for hacking incidents, the identical threshold used for banks. At the moment, crypto exchanges face a most high quality of $3.4 million.
The Upbit breach has additionally drawn political scrutiny over delayed reporting. Though the hack was detected shortly after 5 am, the trade didn’t notify the FSS till almost 11 am. Some lawmakers have alleged the delay was intentional, occurring minutes after Dunamu finalized a merger with Naver Monetary.
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South Korea pushes for stablecoin invoice
As Cointelegraph reported, South Korean lawmakers are additionally pressuring monetary regulators to ship a draft stablecoin invoice by Dec. 10, warning they may push forward with out the federal government if the deadline is missed.
The ruling occasion’s ultimatum follows gradual progress and repeated delays, with officers hoping to carry the invoice to debate throughout the Nationwide Meeting’s extraordinary session in January 2026.
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