South Korean Travel Rule compliance deadline for crypto exchanges is here

The South Korean government last year introduced the so-called Travel Rule, after which several crypto exchanges in the nation were struggling to survive. However, the government-mandated deadline has now been reached and now the exchanges are in compliance with the regulations.

Beginning today, any crypto transfers worth over $821 will be flagged by Korean exchanges. User-verified wallets and a small number of exchanges who have accepted their anti-money laundering or AML system will be able to send money over that amount.

The Travel Rule is a series of rules released by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international financial watchdog, to assist authorities in tracking the movement of virtual assets between virtual asset service providers (VASPs), such as crypto exchanges and digital asset issuers.

“The industry is now taking a step towards institutional acceptance and will work harder for mass adoption,” a source from a local centralized exchange told, praising the regulation measure as a step forward for the nation’s crypto economy.

Korean traders might face difficulty

South Korean traders, which accumulated $45.8 billion in crypto market value in 2021, may have difficulty determining which exchanges they can transfer assets to and from. There are two Travel Rule systems among the top four exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit). Each system works in a slightly different way, and international exchanges must adhere to its rules.

Notably, by September last year, only ten crypto exchanges were registered in South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit.

The blockchain ecosystems Klaytn and Ethereum, the NFT game Axie Infinity, and the decentralized exchange dYdX are all part of the Hashed crypto and Web3 portfolio.

According to local expert Jun Hyuk Ahn, Upbit is the nation’s top exchange, with approximately 78.3% of the exchange market share. It has implemented the Verify VASP system, which it developed in-house. Upbit currently supports transfers to and from Bblock, Gopax, Cashierest, Flat Thai Exchange, Aphrobit, Binance, Bybit, Okcoin, Crypto.com, Coinbase, BITFRONT, Bittrex, Bitbank.cc, Gate.io, Kraken, BitMEX, FTX US, and HARU Invest affiliates in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand.

In September, as TheCoinRise reported, Upbit along with three other South Korean crypto exchanges survived the restriction deadline.