Financial authorities in South Korea said on February 4th that they had no intention of killing cryptocurrency trading, and that local banks won\'t be prevented from issuing new digital currency accounts to named investors.

The latest government measures, commencing January 30th, are for banks to comply with AML and KYC obligations, and were intended only to monitor all transactions in crypto between banks and trading exchanges. The intent was not to force cryptocurrency trading out of the picture altogether, as some have suspected. \"This is not true,\" confirmed a Financial Supervisory Service official. \"We have no plans to kill crypto-trading.\"

When the new rules came into effect, there was no attempt to prevent local banks from opening new digital accounts, provided they were for customers identified under KYC rules. The government confirmed that the new measures were aimed solely at \"cooling down the crypto transactions craze,\" and addressing the illegal uses to which it was put, such as money laundering and tax evasion.

Although there was some public support for the measures, some believe the government went too far, as investment in cryptocurrencies is substantially down. An official from the Industrial Bank of Korea said that they had expected more than 50% of the estimated three million SK traders to have opened new crypto transaction accounts, but the real figure is more like 4%.