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S. Korean Regulators Call for Criminal Punishments for Crypto Market Manipulation
The law is unlikely to go through Parliament this year.
Updated May 11, 2023, 4:27 p.m. Published Nov 25, 2021, 5:48 a.m.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) wants the National Assembly to bring criminal liability to unfair behavior in crypto markets such as price manipulation and insider trading, according to a report submitted to the South Korean Parliament on Nov. 23.
- The FSC report will be used to draft crypto legislation that will go through the Parliament. The National Assembly ordered the FSC to come up with a comprehensive draft bill on crypto in one month, but the law probably wont be ready for the last parliamentary meeting of the year on Dec. 9, CoinDesk Korea reported.
- The FSC recommendations call for punishments relative to the gains obtained unfairly, with minimum one year in prison and fines three to five times the illicit gains. The minimum punishment for gains over KRW 5 billion ($4.2 million) is five years in prison.
- The FSC also called for taxes on some types of non-fungible tokens, seemingly going back on earlier statements that indicated NFTs would be be exempt.
- Seoul is set to implement a 20% tax on crypto gains over KRW 2.5 million ($2,100) starting 2022., but the ruling and opposition parties are calling for an extension to the deadline, the Korea Times reported.
- But the FSC also wants virtual assets service providers to form an association so that they can regulate themselves and rule on any disputes.
Read more: Hours Before South Korean Registration Deadline, Only 10 Exchanges Have Applied
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What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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