Amid a surge in South Korean cryptocurrency trading this year, the country’s banks processed over 64 trillion won (US$57 billion) of deposits and withdrawals linked to crypto exchanges in the first quarter, according to data from the Financial Supervisory Service obtained by Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Byung-wook.
Fast Facts:
- The Q1 transactions through real-name linked accounts with lenders such as K Bank, Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup Bank surpassed 2020’s 37 trillion won (US$33 billion) in deposits and withdrawals for virtual currency transactions in just one quarter, the Maeil Economic Daily reported
- The fees that banks collected from cryptocurrency exchanges also surged. In the first three months of 2021, K-Bank received about 5 billion won (US$4.5 million) in commission from Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Korea, an increase of nearly tenfold from the quarter before.
- Forkast.News reported earlier that South Korea is in the process of tasking a branch of the Financial Services Commission with regulating cryptocurrency exchanges.