Before several publications on the prohibition of operation of the exchange houses in South Korea, after two of them were raided by the authorities of that country, the office of the presidency reported that the closure measure has not materialized.
The South Korean news agency, Yonhap News Agency, picks up on Thursday the statements of various official spokesmen, including Justice Minister Park Sang-ki and Yoon Young-chan, press secretary of President Moon Jae-in.
Yonhap's office first quotes Minister Park at a press conference: "The ministry is preparing a law that basically prohibits any transaction based on a virtual currency. We are very concerned about the madness around virtual currencies and a total closure would be one of the objectives we are pursuing. "
The office of the president then intervenes to clarify, according to the same office of Yonpal, that "the total closure of the exchange houses of cryptocurrencies is one of the measures considered, but that it is not a final decision that will be made firm through a process of discussion and coordination with each government minister. "
Before the raid on the Bithumb and Coinone exchange bureaux, these exchange offices refuted what was published in a Reuters dispatch in which it states that the search measure was accompanied by charges for tax evasion.
Bithumb said he had only a short meeting with the tax officials and Coinone told the Financial Times that "the authorities asked for data such as the volume of transactions of the cryptocurrencies, our sales and if we were paying our taxes well".
The exclusion of some South Korean exchange houses from the Coinmarketcap indexes on Monday, caused a collapse of their market indexes, as the capitalization lost 17.66% and despite a subsequent rebound it has not recovered. All in all, even though CoinMarketCap reflects diminished figures, that's only because it stopped taking into account the volatile numbers handled by the South Korean exchanges.