South Korea’s digital currency task force held a joint meeting on Sunday, September 3d, where they discussed the introduction of stricter regulation and monitoring of virtual currencies among the country’s domestic exchanges, Bitcoin.com reports.
The meeting was attended by the National Tax Service (NTS) and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC).
Financial Services Commission (FSC) chairman Kim Yong-beom, who chaired the task force meeting, reportedly stated: ‘At this point, digital currencies cannot be considered money and currency, nor financial products.’
The South Korean authorities also saw plans drawn toward strengthening user authentication procedures at exchanges as well as ‘suspicious transaction reporting’ systems at banks for transactions related to digital currencies.
They authorities also discussed plans to “punish” initial coin offering (ICO) fundraising platforms for violating the capital market act by raising funds through stock issuance using digital currencies.
It has been reported earlier this week that China’s central bank — the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) — has proclaimed initial coin offerings (ICOs) illegal and demanded all related fundraising activity to be halted immediately.
The bank has determined that ‘more than 90%’ of ICOs to be in violation of fundraising laws.
After that decision Bitcoin (Bitcoin) dropped to a low of $4,140. Only several days after it reached its all-time high of $4,980.
The cryptocurrency markethas lost close to USD 36 billion in value since Friday and currently stands at USD 142 billion as per coinmarketcap.
After peaking close to levels of USD 180 billion, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies has dropped around 20%.