South Korean Bankruptcy Court Judge Calls for More Crypto Regulation

cryptonews.com:

A South Korean bankruptcy court judge has called on the government to bolster regulation in the crypto industry, claiming investors need more protection.

Per Newsis, the claims were made by Judge Lee Seok-jun, of the Seoul Bankruptcy Court. Lee wrote a paper on “regulations intended to protect virtual asset investors.”

The paper was published in the most recent issue of the Court of Korea’s academic journal Sabeub (literal translation: “Justice”).

A slew of crypto-related legal changes come into force in July this year when the Virtual Asset User Protection Act becomes law.

But Lee argued that more regulation is still needed. Lee’s paper analyzed several crypto-related court cases.

Lee concluded that many judges had been forced to create precedents due to a lack of legislation. The judge wrote:

“There was a tendency for the final resolution of [crypto-related] cases to be achieved through court rulings instead of the application of regulations.”

Lee added that the crypto sector urgently needs regulations on “market entry, business activities, and disclosure.”

The judge noted the case of a group of trading platform customers who tried to sue a crypto exchange when a power outage restricted their trading options.

The customers said they were unable to sell coins when a blackout stopped them from logging into their accounts.

Lee was likely referring to a case from 2022, when a fire broke out at a data center hosting the chat app KakaoTalk’s servers. The crypto exchange Upbit uses KakaoTalk for login user identity verification.