Exchanges Bithumb and Coinone will limit services to anonymous traders

Two major South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges, Bithumb and Coinone, have announced that starting next month, their users will be required to have verified accounts to be able to withdraw fiat.

Bithumb, South Korea's largest exchange by trading volume, announced that it will stop providing unverified withdrawal services on October 1 for corporate members and on October 15 for individual members, in line with the government's anti-money laundering policy. However, the Bithumb exchange emphasized that this applies only to fiat, cryptocurrency transactions will continue to be carried out.

At the end of January, the South Korean government introduced a requirement for the de-anonymization of accounts on exchanges. Users using this system will be able to convert their accounts into registered accounts at the bank that provides the exchange with the conversion service.

Today, banks provide such services only to the four best exchanges in the country - Bithumb, Upbit, Coinone and Korbit. This service is provided to Bithumb and Coinone exchanges by Nonghyup Bank. However, despite the efforts of the government, banks and exchanges, only 40-50 percent of the accounts on these four exchanges were converted. 

The Coinone exchange will take similar measures as Nonghyup Bank has requested that it restrict the issuance of Korean currency to users who do not verify their accounts by a certain date in accordance with the Law on the Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information. The restriction on fiat withdrawals will come into force on October 15 and will not apply to cryptocurrency transactions. The exchange asked users to withdraw funds before this date if they do not plan to verify their accounts by then. 

Both exchanges also confirmed that corporations, minors and foreigners cannot own verified accounts. At the time of writing, the exchanges Upbit and Korbit, which do not use the services of Nonghyup Bank, have not made any similar announcements about the cessation of fiat withdrawal services.

According to news.bitcoin.com