The Seoul Southern District Court approved the decision to freeze Shin’s assets until further investigations are concluded.
The FTX cryptocurrency exchange and ecosystem suffered a major crash this year as a result of native cryptocurrencies turning out to be the biggest factor contributing to its demise. Korea’s financial authority, Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU), launched a probe into crypto exchanges to determine whether they had listed in-house, self-issued tokens.
Crypto exchange FTX and its 130 affiliate firms recently filed for bankruptcy due to a price crash of its in-house token, FTX Token.
According to a local report, KoFIU’s investigation is to ensure regulatory adherence for investor safety, as Korean crypto exchanges are banned from issuing native tokens.
A South Korean Financial Services Commission spokesperson said investigators are probing whether crypto exchanges were following the law at the country’s financial market regulator’s request. “Some doubts remain,” he said.
According to local media Yonhap, Flata Exchange is one of the prime suspects in the investigation and is suspected of listing its own token, FLAT, in January 2020. As a result, investigations will be more focused on smaller exchanges. Upbit and Bithumb, two popular exchanges, have been cleared by the authorities and will not be the focus of the investigation.
FTX.com saw an average of 297,229 unique users from South Korea monthly, according to a CoinGecko analysis. South Korea was the country where FTX’s collapse had the biggest impact, according to the same analysis.
$104.4 million (140 billion won) was frozen by South Korean authorities on the suspicion of profiting from unwarranted LUNA sales.
The Seoul Southern District Court approved the decision to freeze Shin’s assets until further investigations are concluded.
