This photo shows the headquarters of Wemade in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday. (Yonhap)
The Financial Services Commission denied a report that it is considering enforcement power to control the listing of cryptocurrencies through mandating approval from the country's top financial regulator.
A local news report claimed Monday that financial authorities, including the FSC and Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, are reviewing to hold the authority to approve crypto firms to float their coins.
"The report claiming financial authorities are looking into whether to approve the listing of cryptocurrencies on local virtual asset exchanges is not true," read an official statement released by the Financial Services Commission a few hours after the report surfaced.
The news report follows on the heels of the recent wemix delisting crisis, after the token under Wemade was pulled from major crypto exchanges here for alleged “false information.” It was suspected that there were considerably more tokens in circulation than the firm had disclosed.
Wemade refuted, pointing to a lack of detailed guidelines on calculating the number of tokens in circulation, even filing a court injunction to hold off the delisting, which eventually failed.
Though the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act mandates an issuer of securities to receive approval from the FSC for stock listing, cryptocurrencies lack such a requirement.
Currently, each crypto exchange makes the decision on the listing of a new cryptocurrency, and the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance, a joint consultative body of the nation's top five crypto exchanges, decides on delisting.
While bills for digital asset management are sitting at the National Assembly, some claim such regulation is necessary for cryptocurrencies as global crypto markets have seen a string of falls in tokens and exchanges recently, including the luna-terra crash earlier this year.
The bills call for the regulation of digital assets similar to how securities are controlled by the Capital Markets Act, and give authority to financial regulators for market supervision.
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