Korean Regulator Urges Haste on Crypto Bill After Exchange Hacks

A senior executive at South Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC) has called on politicians to pass a bill regulating domestic cryptocurrency exchanges with urgency in order to counter lax security in the industry.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Hong Seong-ki, head of the virtual currency response team at the FSC, said:

"While crypto markets have seen rapid growth, such trading platforms don't seem to be well-enough prepared in terms of security."

In March, the Democratic Party of Korea proposed a bill that would put exchanges under the supervision of the FSC.

Hong told the news source that the bill should be passed "as soon as possible," adding that it will most probably happen in the end of the year, when the country's National Assembly is expected to move on the initiative.

"We're trying to legislate the most urgent and important things first, aiming for money-laundering prevention and investor protection," he said, stating that, personally, he wouldn't recommend investing in cryptos.

The regulator's comments comes after two Korean crypto exchanges were hacked in June alone.

In the first instance, Coinrail lost around $40 million in assets due to an attack on June 9, including 1,927 ether. Less than two weeks later, Bithumb also got hacked, losing around $31 million, mostly in XRP tokens.

National Assembly image via Shutterstock