South Korea Pressures Crypto Exchanges for Better Asset Security

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission called an emergency meeting with regulators and digital asset platforms. The gathering followed a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of $6.3 billion from internet-connected wallets at Binance.

Currently, South Korean law requires exchanges to keep at least 80% of customer assets in offline wallets. The government is now pushing to increase this percentage as a preventive measure against external breaches.

Data from the Financial Supervisory Service shows that Upbit holds 99.17% of its assets in cold storage. Bithumb, Coinone, Digital X, and GOPAX also operate above the country's minimum legal threshold.

The regulator also requested that companies strengthen their monitoring of deposits and withdrawals. Exchanges must expand their incident response teams and immediately report any suspicious access attempts to their systems.

The Bank of Korea has launched a survey with banks and exchanges to assess the traditional financial system's exposure to cyberattack risks. The goal is to limit potential damage and prevent security failures from spreading across the local market.