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Upbit Exchange Hacked For 50 Million Dollars in Ethereum

Lee Seok-woo, CEO of Upbit, published a report explaining that deposits and withdrawals have been suspended on the exchange, for the time being, stating that a shocking total of 342,000 ETH, a value of $50 million USD, has been stolen from the Upbit Ethereum Hot Wallet.

Seok-woo did not go into specifics regarding what led to the disappearance of such a startling amount of ETH, he only reported that the amount was lifted from the exchange’s hot wallet and transferred to a yet-to-be-identified wallet.

To ensure the safety of users’ assets, Upbit will cover the lost assets. Also, assets in the hot wallet have been immediately transferred to cold storage following the occurrence of the missing assets. Deposit and withdrawal will most likely remain restricted for the next two weeks.

The report strongly advised the users to prevent depositing ETH in the abnormal address where the act occurred. This instruction came directly from the exchange manager who handles cryptocurrency, the report claimed.

Fortunately, in a tweet, Binance Co-Founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”), offered to help Upbit along with other players in the industry to ensure that any stolen funds from Upbit into Binance is frozen for good.

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South Korea’s Leading Crypto Exchanges Aid Police in Hunting "Nth Rooms" Blackmail Porn Members

The four primary crypto exchanges in South Korea, namely Coinone, Korbit, Bithumb, and Upbit, have reportedly offered to help police investigate the sexual exploitation of underage girls in the “Nth Rooms” scandal that has sparked a national outcry.

Crypto exchanges table vital information

The sexual exploitation of underage school-going girls in South Korea has been happening for years in the “Nth Rooms” incident. Notably, they would be filmed undertaking violent self-harm and sexual acts, and the videos taken were made available via Telegram chat rooms after members made crypto payments.

It is reported that at least 10,000 people utilized these chatrooms after paying fees ranging from $200 to $1,200.

Following thorough investigations by the South Korean police, dozens of victims have been established as the videos usually presented the girls’ addresses and names. Currently, the police have identified 74 people, including 16 underage girls who were exploited.

Crypto exchanges seek to reveal crucial information about this scandal that has left people across the globe mouth agape because of the inhumanity rendered to underage girls. It is alleged that among the 10,000 members in the “Nth Rooms” were famous startup company CEOs, sports stars, popular artists, and professors.

The ringleader of the blackmails and chat rooms was revealed as 24-year-old Cho Ju-bin after at least 5 million South Koreans signed petitions to have him named.

Crypto exchanges heed the call

Following requests by the South Korean police for assistance, the four leading crypto exchanges in this nation seek to comply with this appeal by offering crucial information that will be instrumental in unraveling the culprits in the “Nth Rooms” scandal.

Earlier this month, the country’s national assembly amended the Act on Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Information, and this officiated the legalization of cryptocurrency trading and holding.

Once implemented, this law will be instrumental in averting crimes, such as the “Nth Rooms” scandal and money laundering given that crypto businesses, such as exchanges, wallet companies, and trusts, will be required to have a real-name verification partnership with an approved local bank. As a result, a verified person will be assigned a single bank account where he/she can deposit and withdraw fiat currency to and from an exchange.

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South Korea Authorities Seize $47M in Crypto from Tax Evaders

Authorities in the South Korean province of Gyeonggi have conducted the largest tax seizures ever, seizing $47 million in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

According to the coverage reported by the Financial Times, the seizure involved about 12,000 tax evaders. The authority has called the action the largest “cryptocurrency seizure for back taxes in Korean history.”

Those “tax dodgers” committed the crime by connecting their trading or investment activities on trading platforms operating in the country with their phone numbers. The process, though rigorous, had to be done manually as crypto exchanges were unable to fully provide the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) details of the defaulting taxpayers. In addition, the FT report was unclear which digital currency trading platform was involved in the investigation.

South Korea has a robust cryptocurrency trading engagement amongst its citizens, and the country has been making moves to implement accomodating regulations. One of these is the law passed by the Korean National Assembly in March 2020. This law mandates cryptocurrency exchanges to take down customer’s details through KYC and obtain licenses to operate from banks.

While big exchanges such as UpBit have been able to comply, other smaller trading platforms have had their struggles in complying, a situation that was compounded by financial institutions dissociating from crypto exchanges. Besides these, South Korea has long been mulling enforcing a 20% capital gains tax on cryptocurrencies, all of which will be made easier with compliant crypto exchanges.

South Korea is one of the more receptive countries to blockchain and cryptocurrency-related innovations. While crypto has thrived in the country in the past decade, the government is taking bold steps to develop its own Central Bank Digital Currency, the Digital Won. Despite its soft stance, however, the nation has zero-tolerance for fraud amongst crypto entities, as showcased in the ongoing raid of Bithumb exchange amidst a broad fraud investigation.

South Korea Top Four Crypto Exchanges Launch Joint Venture To Abide By AML Regulations

Four major crypto exchanges in South Korea have joined hands to establish a joint venture to fight against money laundering. The heads of Bithumb, Korbit, Coinone, and Upbit signed a memorandum to form a system, which will enable them to adhere to the travel rule.

Complying with the travel rule

The travel rule is a global standard imposed by the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental anti-money laundering watchdog, on virtual asset service providers like digital wallet providers and crypto exchanges.

As per the announcement:

“The rule requires virtual asset service providers to share the identities of users involved in any virtual asset transfers over 1 million won ($884).”

The regulation is expected to work like a SWIFT code, which is widely used as the industry standard in traditional financial institutions.

This rule is outlined in South Korea’s cryptocurrency law known as the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction information.

The joint venture is intended to cut costs

In a joint statement, the four companies noted:

“Instead of developing their own systems, the companies decided to co-develop a system that can be used industrywide.”

South Korea has been a notable player in the crypto space.

According to a recent study by Alba Heaven, an information provider, 23.6% of South Korean college students were investing in cryptocurrencies out of 1,750 people.

The survey noted that these students were inclined to invest in this territory based on the global crypto craze experience.

The respondents also cited high investment returns, low barriers to entry, and an opportunity to overcome class hierarchy as other reasons they step into crypto investment.

On the other hand, the South Korean administration announced last month that it was not relenting on its quest to levy a 20% income tax on capital gains from crypto transactions in 2022, despite growing investor concerns for the taxation plan to be delayed.

Upbit Becomes the First Exchange to Register with FIU as September Deadline Looms

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has leapt to become the first digital currency exchange for registering with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)- the country’s market regulator.

As unveiled by the government body, the move comes after the exchange completed the requirement to meet the registration, which includes partnering with a local bank to capture customers data for Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering controls.

According to earlier reports, several cryptocurrency exchanges operating in South Korea were having trouble setting up a partnership with banks. The entire crypto sector faces headwinds on the impending regulations. When the September 24 deadline comes, the FIU will take down the websites of exchanges that have not yet registered, and access to these exchanges by local consumers will be significantly impacted.

On the part of Upbit, its partnership was with K-Bank, a digital bank that will help facilitate real name verification. As reported, other named exchanges, including Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit, have also secured a similar partnership, and are on track to register with the FIU before the deadline. The review of the application period for Upbit is three months. However, the exchange has bought itself time with the filed registration.

South Korea is taking its digital currency regulations very seriously. The same rules that bind local exchanges are also applicable to their foreign counterparts. In a move to wade off regulatory reprimand, Binance exchange removed all cryptocurrency trading pairs involving the Korean Won from its site. The inability to meet the regulatory standards have also pushed OKEx exchange to shut down its operations in the Asian country.

There is currently a frantic race amongst crypto stakeholders in South Korea to meet the regulators’ demand. The population is highly crypto-centric, and exchanges that scale the FIU’s demands are bound to see a boosted market with less competition.

S. Korean Exchanges to be Held Accountable for LUNA Crash

The collapse of the Terra ecosystem including the protocol’s two flagship digital currencies, LUNA and UST may have more aftermaths than earlier imagined.

According to the latest reports from local media platform Newspim, the top cryptocurrency exchanges are now likely to be held accountable for failing to implement measures to protect investors from the crash.

In just about a week, UST depegged widely from the expected $1 price while the LUNA coin lost more than 99.99% of its value, charting the course of history as the worst collapse of a major cryptocurrency in recent times.

South Korean regulators and lawmakers are notably looking for who to hold accountable for this unfortunate event and exchanges including Bithumb, Upbit, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax are the best culprits. With a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, May 24th, a number of government officials, crypto industry giants, and members of the legislative arm will be present to assess the customer protection measures instituted before the crash by the trading platforms.

While it is not clear the exact yardstick and the modalities the inquiries will take, the latest reports confirm earlier stories that show the government has resorted to intensive scrutiny for digital assets trading platforms operating in the country.

With the collapse of the Terra protocol, regulators have levied founder and CEO Do Kwon with tax and fraud charges. Rather than brood over the ongoing mishaps, Kwon is reportedly in search of a functional and acceptable solution that can get the LUNA community back on its feet.

Nonetheless, expectations remain high as the entire ecosystem awaits the next course of action from the Korean watchdogs who have been absolutely concerned about the volatility of the industry and have dealt with exchanges with iron hands prior to this time.

With everyone anticipating a purported forking of the Terra network, investors who stacked LUNA after the price slumped will be carted off with gains as LUNA opened the week with gains as reported by Blockchain.News.

ApeCoin Experiences Sharp Price Surge on South Korean Exchange

On April 12, the price of ApeCoin (APE), which is an ERC-20 token that was produced by Yuga Labs, had a large spike, reaching $90.00 per token on the cryptocurrency exchange that is known as Upbit and which is based in South Korea. The price surge was just a brief phenomenon, however, and was followed by a sharp collapse that wiped out the bulk of the profits. In spite of this fact, APE is still trading at a significant premium of around $4.50 above other exchanges, with each token going for $10.90 at the time this article was published.

It would seem that a retail mania and a limitation of viable trading routes on Upbit were the primary factors that led to the price increase that took place. At the present, the only trading pair for APE that is listed on the exchange is BTC/APE, which only accounts for a minuscule portion of the coin’s overall trading activity. Other trading pairs for APE are expected to be added in the near future. During the course of the day, transactions involving around 4 million APE tokens took place. This is in comparison to the total amount of APE tokens now in circulation, which is 369 million.

However, it’s probable that the rise didn’t continue very long since Upbit places trading limitations on its users’ accounts. On the same day, the exchange put a hold on deposits and withdrawals of Ether (ETH) and ERC-20 tokens as they awaited the completion of the Ethereum network’s Shanghai upgrade. These actions were carried out in advance of the forthcoming hard fork. Users of Upbit were unable to convert their APE, which is an ERC-20 token and is regarded as a memecoin by some people, into other ERC-20 tokens such as Tether (USDT) and ETH by selling or purchasing APE in exchange for those tokens. APE is a memecoin and is believed to be a cryptocurrency by some individuals. As a consequence of this fact, the one and only option that was still available was to exchange Bitcoin (BTC) for Australian Dollars (BTC/USD).

Since the price increase, cryptocurrency price aggregators like CoinMarketCap have labeled the APE pricing on Upbit as a “outlier” when computing the aggregate prices of cryptocurrencies. This is due to the fact that Upbit’s prices are much lower than those of the competition in the market. Since the price increase on Upbit was not mirrored on any other exchanges, this may imply that it was an isolated event that occurred just on Upbit. Nevertheless, this occurrence highlights the potential for sudden price volatility in cryptocurrency markets, as well as the effect trading restrictions may have on the value of cryptocurrencies.

Upbit Announces Listing of Layer 1 Blockchain SEI

Upbit, a globally recognized digital asset exchange, has announced the addition of a new digital asset, SEI, to its KRW and BTC markets. The announcement was made on August 14, 2023, and provides detailed information about the listing and associated guidelines.

SEI Token Listing Details

SEI, the native token of the Sei network, will be supported for deposits only on the Sei network (other networks like BSC will not be supported). The support for SEI deposits and withdrawals is scheduled to commence on August 15, 2023, at 21:00 KST.

Trading Guidelines

Trading Support Time: The exact time for the commencement of trading will be announced later.

Initial Order Limitations: For the first 5 minutes after the new digital asset is added, buy orders will be restricted.

Initial Price Limitations: The initial 5-minute sell order price limit will be announced later, reflecting other exchange rates.

Market and Reserved Order Limitations: For the first hour after the addition of the new digital asset, market and reserved orders will be restricted.

Deposit Considerations

Deposits from exchanges not included in the VV linkage (including account owner verification service linkage) list may require review and may take a long time to reflect or be returned.

Deposits and withdrawals are only possible to and from personal wallet addresses that have completed ‘ownership verification.’

High-value digital asset deposits with unclear origins may require origin verification, and if not completed by the trading support start time, the deposit may not be reflected.

Investment Risk Warning

Upbit has warned that digital asset investment is exposed to rapid price fluctuations due to speculative demand and changes in domestic and international regulatory environments. Investors are urged to carefully review project information and understand the characteristics of digital assets before trading.

About SEI

SEI is a Layer 1 blockchain specialized in the DeFi sector, aiming to build a base layer for decentralized finance. It has built its own transaction settlement engine at the network level, shared by dApps built on Sei, to provide deep liquidity. SEI utilizes the Tendermint consensus algorithm’s efficiency and parallelization technology to improve network processing ability and block creation time. SEI tokens can be used for transaction fee payments, validator staking participation, on-chain governance participation, and as a payment method within the network.

Additional Information

SEI is the first project to be supported for trading both domestically and internationally. Initial token circulation is 1,800,000,000 SEI, approximately 18% of the total issuance of 10,000,000,000. Attention is needed regarding the network’s smooth operation and stability after network launching.

Binance has also announced the listing of Sei (SEI) along with CyberConnect (CYBER). Trading for these new assets is set to commence on August 15, 2023, at 12:00 (UTC), aligning with the timeline for SEI’s listing on Upbit.

Upbit Announces Next LUNA2 Airdrop for LUNC Holders

Upbit, the South Korean-based cryptocurrency exchange, has detailed its plans for the forthcoming LUNA2 airdrop targeting LUNC holders. LUNC, previously known as LUNA, underwent a rebranding and its holders are now on the cusp of receiving LUNA2 tokens.

Snapshot Insights

The LUNA2 airdrop is slated to kick off in the next 24 hours.

A staggered distribution approach has been adopted, with 70% of the airdrop tokens to be rolled out over a span of 24 months.

Two pivotal snapshots were captured to determine the airdrop’s distribution:

1. First snapshot: 2022-05-07, 22:59:37 (SGT) at block height 7,544,910. Exchange rate: 1 LUNC = 1.034735071 LUNA2.

2. Second snapshot: 2022-05-27, 00:38:08 (SGT) at block height 7,790,000. Exchange rate: 1 LUNC = 0.000015307927 LUNA2.

A bonus provision is in place: LUNC holders with a balance exceeding 10,000 at the first snapshot’s time will be entitled to an extra 30% of the initial airdrop during the second phase.

Caveats to Consider

Upbit’s endorsement of the airdrop doesn’t equate to a trading green light for LUNA2 on their platform.

UNA2 airdrop quantities will be truncated to a maximum of 8 decimal places.

Monthly LUNA2 airdrop quantities are subject to change, contingent on the vesting release strategy, a decision resting with the token’s governing foundation.

The Upbit team signed off the announcement, reiterating their commitment to their user base.

Cryptocurrency Exchange Upbit's Operator Dunamu Announces Q2 2023 Net Profit of KRW 108 Billion

The most recent quarterly report suggests that Dunamu, the company that is responsible for operating the cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, had a net profit of KRW 108 billion during the second quarter of 2023 (April-June), when the period in question was measured. The report includes this data in its comprehensive analysis. In stark comparison to the KRW 37.8 billion net loss announced in the second quarter of the prior year, the current figures show a profit of KRW 5.2 billion.

For this quarter, the company registered a revenue of KRW 186.6 billion, marking a 47.9% decline from the KRW 358.1 billion reported in Q2 2022. Despite this, the quarter’s net profit showcased a positive direction. After adjustments, the operating profit stood at KRW 86.6 billion, reflecting a 68.9% decrease from earlier figures.

Dunamu’s research indicates that “A global liquidity squeeze and extended economic slump have affected investor confidence,” resulting in decreased sales.This is because of the global liquidity crunch and the prolonged economic downturn. In addition, the company said that a rise in the value of virtual assets in comparison to 2022 contributed to the development in net profit. This was stated in reference to the growth in net profit.

Since 2022, Dunamu has been required to submit its business reports on a semi-annual basis since the company falls into the group of companies that are required to carry out external audits because it has more than 500 shareholders for each security. This obligation has been placed on Dunamu due to the fact that it belongs to the category of organisations that are required to carry out external audits.