In the virtual asset industry, there are claims that the Financial Services Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission are applying a double standard to customer assets deposited with virtual asset exchanges.
According to the virtual asset industry on the 5th, the Virtual Asset User Protection Act requires exchanges to strictly separate and manage customer assets (deposits and virtual assets) from the company's own assets. Customer deposits must be placed separately at banks, and virtual assets must be stored in physically separated cold wallets (offline storage devices).
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) plans to introduce a real-time asset monitoring system at virtual asset exchanges, prompted by Bithumb's erroneous bitcoin payment incident in Feb. Currently, most exchanges check assets on a daily or weekly basis, which will be shortened to every five minutes.
While the Financial Services Commission (FSC) intends to strengthen internal controls at virtual asset exchanges to the level of financial companies, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) regulates virtual asset exchanges by classifying them as "other information service businesses," not "financial businesses." Under current law, companies classified as financial businesses must separate customer assets from company assets, and if the company asset aggregates are 5 trillion won or more, they are designated as a large corporate group.
As of the end of last year, Bithumb's asset aggregates stood at 5.2 trillion won, of which customer assets were 2.06 trillion won. If exchanges were classified as financial businesses, Bithumb's asset aggregates would fall to 3.14 trillion won and it would be excluded from the large corporate group category. Dunamu, which operates Upbit, the No. 1 virtual asset exchange, is also designated as a large company, and Upbit's assets exceed 5 trillion won even excluding customer assets.
Once designated as a large company, obligations such as disclosure of corporate group status and regulations on cross-shareholdings, debt guarantees, and voting rights restrictions apply. Large companies must also disclose the designation of the same person (owner) as a mandatory disclosure. Introduced in 1987, the same-person designation system was implemented to prevent private benefit pursuits such as octopus-like corporate expansion and internal favoritism in awarding work.
Large companies are required to submit materials on the shareholding status of the same person and related parties such as relatives. If the same person's relatives omit disclosure, the same person may face criminal penalties.