South Korean Finance Regulators to Examine Upbit’s Monopoly: Report

Monetary Providers Fee Chairman Kim Byung-hwan stated he would “look into it” relating to the market domination of the nation’s main crypto trade Upbit.

In a nationwide meeting assembly, legislator Lee Kang-il raised points about Upbit’s dominance and its shut partnership with the native financial institution, Ok-Financial institution.

The web banking agency holds a good portion of Upbit’s deposits, in keeping with an Oct. 10 report in native media.

Monopoly Issues

“I’m conscious of the problem of Upbit’s monopolistic system,” Lee stated earlier than including [translation]:

“The monopolistic development towards one firm, Upbit, began after its enterprise partnership with Ok-Financial institution.”

He then raised a problem about Upbit taking on a good portion of Ok Financial institution’s deposits, which is ready to endure an preliminary public providing (IPO) quickly.

The lawmaker stated Upbit accounts for round 20% of Ok-Financial institution’s 22 trillion KRW (round $16.three billion) deposits, including, “If Upbit transactions are lower off, a financial institution run on Ok-Financial institution will happen.” He was additionally crucial of the financial institution, questioning whether or not it was cheap for such a company with a revenue margin of lower than 1% to supply 2.1% for Upbit buyer deposits.

“The affect between Upbit and Ok-Financial institution violates the precept of separating finance from trade,” he added.

FSC Chairman Kim responded by stating that the IPO overview of Ok-Financial institution has been completely examined,” including, “Since we have now a digital asset committee, we are going to overview the [Upbit] scenario comprehensively.”

This week, South Korea’s Ministry of Technique and Finance announced that it’s reviewing measures to control stablecoins extra strictly.

Upbit Big in South Korea

In keeping with CoinGecko, the 2017-established centralized trade Upbit has a each day buying and selling quantity of $1.2 billion. Round 10% of that quantity is the BTC/KRW pair, with altcoins resembling Chilliz (CHZ) and Sui (SUI), additionally well-liked amongst Korean crypto merchants.

Buying and selling quantity on the trade spiked to $15 billion in the course of the 2024 market peak in mid-March. Comparatively, the world’s main trade, Binance, has a foreign money each day quantity of round $12.5 billion.

Earlier this 12 months, CryptoPotato reported that Upbit dominated 80% of South Korea’s crypto buying and selling and was ranked fifth globally. Bithumb is Korea’s second-largest crypto trade, with $700 million in each day quantity.

In late September, Upbit introduced a change in its privateness coverage to retailer person information on US Amazon Internet Providers (AWS) servers, efficient from Oct. 1.