South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has ordered exchanges to stop dealing in tokens that could potentially be used for money laundering, according to a press release issued on November 2. The announcement specifically refers to “dark coins”, which are privacy coins.

• The regulatory body updates the Special Payments Act to tackle issues of money laundering that might arise from cryptocurrency
• It specifically highlighted privacy coins, which it referred to as dark coins, such as Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR)
• Additional changes include updates to KYC and AML procedures, mandating that exchanges and other providers ask users to link their accounts to their real names via government identity numbers
• The changes will come into effect from March 2021, with exchanges asked to offer a report on operations within six months of the law’s institution
• South Korean exchange UpBit delisted several privacy coins in September 2019, citing money laundering concerns and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulation; OKEx’s South Korean branch had done the same around the same time