The five largest crypto exchanges in South Korea have signed a “crypto-crime-fighting” MOU with the country’s police force — and will work with officers to fight crypto-powered counterfeiting and crypto fraud artists.
According to Fn News, the exchanges – market leaders Upbit and Bitumb as well as Corbit, Coinon and Gopax – have agreed to cooperate with the police investigation into “crimes related to virtual assets” and “to prevent harm to investors”.
The police stated that the crime rate “in the investment sector” is now increasing and the rapidly growing crypto and stock investment is “crazy”.
Officials also noted that the volume of the domestic crypto market is increasing – although the past few months have seen a slowdown in the beginning of the bear market.
However, he pointed out that more and more South Koreans are now becoming crypto investors.
And this is leading to opportunistic crime as fraudsters try to trick the victim with “guaranteed high profit” crypto investments and wallet hacking cases, he said. He also said that some criminal groups have been known to use crypto to “launder illicit funds”.
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“The need to cooperate with exchanges” is growing, the officials said, especially during the investigation process, when police investigators want to follow the traces of crypto transactions.
The National Police Agency said that since April this year, it has been working “in partnership” with the Personal Exchange to establish a network of “direct lines” – which will allow the exchanges to pass on important information to the police.
The police also stated that they will “continue cooperation by sharing information on measures to prevent cryptoasset-related criminal investigations, damage prevention, seizure of criminal proceeds and money laundering.”
The five trading platforms are currently the only exchanges licensed to operate in the fiat KRW markets, and all five have commercial banking partners. Last month, the chief legal officer at Dunamu, the operator of AppBit, welcomed a speech about new regulations for the crypto sector.