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South Korea: $600 million uncovered in Illegal cryptocurrency Forex trading

South korea: $600 million uncovered in illegal cryptocurrency forex trading

South Korea: $600 million uncovered in Illegal cryptocurrency Forex trading

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The Korea Customs Service (KCS) has revealed an investigation into illicit Forex trading practices, and uncovered $600 million (637.5 billion won) worth cryptocurrencies that were exchanged illegally in South Korea.

The statement further disclosed four instances of illegal tradings. In the first case, money was transferred from Japan to an unknown country whereby 53.7 billion won were sent to another person/entity using cryptocurrencies. In the second case, funds worth 472.3 billion Korean won were exchanged between Australia and South Korea. KCS explained that transferring funds between countries with the sole purpose of avoiding bank and remittance fees is considered illegal.

In the third case, foreign currency was sent to an overseas organization (as cryptocurrencies) which were then converted and remitted to the recipient. In the fourth case, funds worth 164.7 billion won were received by a paper company, citing ‘purchase of software’ as a coverup. KCS mentioned that it will start investigating cryptocurrency agents and forex operators for money laundering and illegal trading charges. Other areas that will undergo critical inspection include smuggling of drugs using virtual currencies. The names of the suspects were not revealed in the press release.

The announcement came on the same day the finance minister, Kim Dong-yeon, said that cryptocurrency market and exchanges will not be banned in the country. Instead, South Korea will be focusing on regulating cryptocurrency exchanges. The country has been working on adopting cryptocurrencies, after the ministry of justice initially banned ICOs last year. The ministry also stated that it would be banning cryptocurrency trading earlier in January. However, this move was not supported by the Ministry of Finance, as reported in their official statement, “We do not share the same views as the Ministry of Justice on a potential cryptocurrency exchange ban.”

While the majority of the ministries continue to support cryptocurrency activities, the South Korean government is doing its best to prevent illegal trading proceedings.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Published at Thu, 01 Feb 2018 05:36:58 +0000

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Bitcoin Will Give Japan’s Economy a Substantial Boost

bitcoin and cryptocurrencies had a year of exceptional growth in 2017.  The cryptocurrency market cap managed to surpass the valuation of $638 billion and many experts believe that it will further increase.

The Cryptocurrency Job Market

2017 was one of the most exciting and interesting years for the cryptocurrency market. bitcoin and Ethereum had a spectacular bull run and managed to make huge gains for investors and traders. We also had a huge number of Initial Coin Offerings and a record-breaking amount of funding. ICOs managed to raise over $3.7 billion in funding for blockchain and cryptocurrency-related projects. Most of these startups were successfully able to raise their funding goals and are now on a hiring spree.

An article by Fortune mentions that the number of bitcoin and blockchain-related job listings grew by over 5,753%. Experts believe that this is just the start and that the number of bitcoin jobs will rise further in the upcoming years. Some governments have decided to implement regulations and laws in order to attract bitcoin companies to operate in their countries. The most recent example is Belarus, which implemented new laws to officially legalize cryptocurrencies and give them a tax-exempt status for the next five years in the hopes of attracting companies to start operations in the country.

How Japan Will Benefit from bitcoin

Japan has become one of the most popular countries for bitcoin and blockchain-related companies. One of the major reasons for this situation is the fact that the Japanese government has proper regulations and laws that favor cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, the Japanese government officially recognized bitcoin as a legal payment method. This caused a major price increase, as many Japanese investors decided to invest in the decentralized cryptocurrency.

Analysts at Nomura believe that the price rise of bitcoin has given many investors a very high return on investment, which might lead to a boost for the economy of Japan. The lead of the analyst team, Yoshiyuki Suimon, stated the following:

Rises in asset values often result in a rise in consumer spending, too, known as the wealth effect. We estimate the wealth effect from unrealized gains on bitcoin trading by Japanese investors since the start of fiscal year 2017, and estimate a potential boost to consumer spending of 23.2-96.0 billion yen.

He also added:

Moreover, the fact that the rise in bitcoin prices was concentrated in 2017 fourth quarter could result in the wealth effect materialising in 2018 first quarter, and if that is the case, we estimate a potential boost to real GDP growth on an annualised quarter over quarter basis of up to about 0.3 percentage points

The effects of bitcoin are multiple on the economy of Japan. Not only are further jobs being created, but the resulting wealth effect from the cryptocurrency’s rise in value is spurring real and measurable economic growth. As more cryptocurrency exchanges and operations move to Japan, it’s likely that this financial trend will continue unabated.

What are your thoughts on the high amount of gains caused by bitcoin? Do you think that it will benefit Japan’s economy? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Pixabay

The post Bitcoin Will Give Japan’s Economy a Substantial Boost appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

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