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South Korea Elects Crypto-Friendly Lee Jae-myung as New President
During the election Lee Jae-myung made a host of crypto promises to appeal to the nation's 15 million crypto investors.
Jun 4, 2025, 6:33 p.m.
What to know:
- Lee Jae-myung was elected as South Korea's president, defeating the Conservative Party's Kim Moon-soo by nearly three million votes.
- Lee has promised to support South Korea's crypto industry, including legalizing spot cryptocurrency ETFs and allowing institutional investments.
- South Korea has implemented new crypto regulations, including the Virtual Asset User Protection Act, to oversee and protect digital asset transactions.
Crypto-friendly Lee Jae-myung was elected as South Korea's new president on Wednesday, defeating the incumbent Conservative Party's leader Kim Moon-soo.
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During the election Lee made a number of promises to South Korea's crypto industry, appealing to the nation's 15 million crypto investors. These included legalizing spot cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds and allowing institutional investors like the National Pension Fund to make investments into certain cryptocurrencies and products, local media outlet The Korea Herald said in May.
Lee also said the country should support a won-based stablecoin market "to prevent national wealth from leaking overseas," during a policy discussion with YouTube creators, The Korea Herald reported.
The Democratic Party of Korea's Lee won against Kim from the People Power Party, its opposition party, by nearly three million votes in the snap election. There were more than 17 million votes in total and Lee secured 49.4% of them, data from South Korea's National Election Commission showed.
South Korea has established new regulations for crypto companies over the past two years. Its National Assembly passed legislation for digital assets in 2023. The Virtual Asset User Protection Act defined what digital assets were and set penalties for unfair transactions. It also gave the Financial Services Commission authority to oversee service providers. The nation also published guidelines for regulating security tokens around a similar time.
Now South Korea has started letting non-profits and exchanges sell crypto under new rules under the Financial Services Commission.
Countries and leaders in Asia — like in Pakistan and Hong Kong — have been pushing for more crypto measures as the sector has jumped to reach its current $3.4 trillion market cap and crypto has become more mainstream.
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KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.
What to know:
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
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- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
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A few Republicans have crypto's destiny in their hands at the SEC, CFTC
After holiday leadership shifts, the two U.S. markets regulators — the SEC and CFTC — are now run only by pro-crypto Republicans, with Congress still debating.
What to know:
- The crypto industry finally has two permanent, crypto-friendly chairmen at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and they have no Democratic pushback.
- The lack of fully stocked commissions at the market regulators is a big problem in the eyes of Senate Democrats negotiating the crypto market structure bill.
- The lone remaining Democrat, Caroline Crenshaw, left the SEC last week.
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