South Korea tightens crypto-exchange controls after Bithumb mistaken payout
( April 6, 2026, 08:33 GMT | Official Statement) -- MLex Summary: South Korea’s financial watchdog said Monday an emergency inspection of the country’s major virtual-asset exchanges, conducted for about a month from Feb. 10 to Mar. 6 after Bithumb’s mistaken payout incident, found that all of them were holding at least as much crypto as shown on their books while exposing broad weaknesses in customer-asset reconciliation, high-risk manual transactions and internal controls. The Financial Services Commission said the review found that several exchanges were reconciling customer assets only once every 24 hours, while many lacked automated checks, layered approvals and other safeguards for manual, high-risk transactions such as event payouts. It also found weak compliance monitoring and risk-management systems across much of the sector. The regulator and the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance said they would tighten self-regulatory standards in April, require exchanges to build five-minute reconciliation systems by May and reflect the main measures in South Korea’s planned second-stage virtual-asset legislation.Statement is attached (in Korean)....
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