South Korea to announce ban on Bitcoin

South Korea is mulling to put a ban on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin that are being traded through its exchanges.

According to the justice minister South Korea, virtual currencies creating great concern for the government. While other countries such as Russia, England, India and some others including tech companies like Telegram and Kodak are planning to launch their own cryptocurrencies.

South Korea is taking a different stance; the country has concerns over trading in the local exchanges that is why several Seoul cryptocurrency exchanges were raided this week following a probe into alleged tax evasion.

The way South Korean government is after the exchanges it seems different plan other than bringing companies under the hood of taxation. Bitcoin and some other virtual currencies have lost about 10% of their value on Thursday. But it’s hard to measure the impact of events happening in South Korea on cryptocurrencies.

However, there is a low level of trading and relatively a small number of people holding the virtual currencies, abnormal price fluctuations have become the norm in this trading format. Digital currencies like Bitcoin have surged during the last year which drove huge demand among investors and specifically naïve investors which creates concerns about gambling addiction.

Justice Minister South Korea, Park Sang-ki said, “There are great concerns regarding virtual currencies and we are preparing a bill to put a ban on cryptocurrency trading through exchanges.”

It can be understood that the department is preparing legislation which would shut down the exchanges, the country’s largest virtual currency operator, Bithumb was also raided by the authorities during the events in South Korea. An anonymous official told Reuters that we have been asked to disclose the paperwork related to taxation. The government already announced in December that it would do more surveillance over exchanges and apply measures to stop anonymous trading.