South Korea is making regulations for digital assets stricter before institutional entry into the market. These changes were finalized during the fourth Virtual Asset Committee meeting held by the South Korean-based Financial Services Commission.
The key discussions, according to the press release, were focused on the sales of virtual assets of non-profit organizations, specifically groups that receive donations and sponsorships.
To prevent money laundering and increase transparency, the new set of guidelines strengthened verification of transactions. The new rules ensure that donations and transfers are only allowed through domestic won exchange accounts, this way there can be an overlap by multiple organizations to help identify customers.
The new guidelines will also help to curb conflicts of interest through the minimisation of market impact. Sales of digital assets will be limited to the top twenty crypto assets by market capitalization on five key won exchanges, and to control trading, a daily sales limit will be placed.
Source: Financial Services Commission
Exchanges are also expected to have their own set of self-standards to prevent trading support for meme coins or cryptocurrencies that cause high levels of market volatility. The self-standards include suspending trading support for coins that have a market capitalization lower than 4 billion won for more than 30 days or an average daily trading turnover of less than 1%.
As per the guidelines, virtual asset exchanges will start to issue digital asset sales trading accounts from June onwards, with a revised version of best practices kicking in on June 1, 2025.