South Korea’s finance minister has said that, the government has no plans to shut down cryptocurrency trading.
This seems to be great news for investors as many were worried that authorities might go as far as blocking virtual coin platforms.
The comment by Kim Dong-yeon on Wednesday comes as traders at home and around the world have been spooked by conflicting comments from government officials in South Korea.
A major hub for cryptocurrency trade, said that Seoul was planning to ban local digital coin exchanges.
“There is no intention to ban or suppress cryptocurrency (market),” the Finance Minister said.
According to him, the government’s immediate task is to regulate exchanges.
Adversely, the country’s customs earlier on Wednesday announced it had uncovered illegal cryptocurrency foreign exchange trading worth nearly $600 million.
“Customs service has been closely looking at illegal foreign exchange trading using cryptocurrency as part of the government’s task force,” it said.
Customs said about 637.5 billion won ($596.02 million) worth of foreign exchange crimes were detected.
Illegal foreign currency trading of 472.3 billion formed the bulk of the cryptocurrency crimes, it said in a statement, but gave no details on what action authorities were taking against the rule breaches.
Seoul previously said that it is considering shutting down local cryptocurrency exchanges, which threw the market into turmoil and hammered bitcoin prices.
