SEOUL — An election victory by Yoon Suk-yeol, a prosecutor-turned politician from South Korea’s conservative opposition party, sparked hope for policy changes in a country where regulators are still reluctant to officially recognize digital money or virtual currencies as a general means of exchange like stocks.
Yoon has expressed his willingness to foster the digital asset market by enacting a new law governing transactions in South Korea’s virtual currency market. which has been dogged by fraud, cyberattacks and other illegal activities. Regulators have maintained strict steps to prevent irrational and excessive speculative investments.
“I will support technology development and preemptively overhaul the institutional foundation in preparation for the emergence of various forms of new concept digital assets,” Yoon said during his stumping tour. “There will be a policy shift to a negative regulatory system so that private autonomy and creativity can be fully exercised without worrying about regulations.”
Yoon’s conservative People Power Party is pushing for a new law that would include clauses protecting investors by recovering all profits from unfair transactions such as market price manipulation through judicial procedures and expanding an insurance system in case of hacking or system errors.
Yoon’s party supports the taxation of cryptocurrency income as digital asset income despite ongoing controversy over whether cryptocurrency transactions are true income subject to tax payment. Digital currency is a decentralized digital asset that is exchangeable between users through peer-to-peer transactions. The digital money market operates on a decentralized blockchain which means no central authority holds transaction records stored on the computer of every owner of a cryptocurrency.
If virtual currencies are included in the scope of capital gains, the benchmark price should also be determined in addition to…
