SEOUL, South Korea—Financial regulators in South Korea have launched a digital currency task force to focus on regulatory and licensing parameters for bitcoin exchanges.
It’s expected the country will introduce bitcoin regulations next year, Crypto Coins News reported.
The task force held its first meeting in November and plans to hold several more in the coming months. The task force agreed that the bitcoin and digital currency sector needs to be regulated, Crypto Coins News said.
The publication said the country’s Financial Services Commission launched the task force and convened the meeting, and has met with other authorities, including the Bank of Korea, the country’s central bank, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the Financial Supervisory Service.
“As things stand, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning is tasked to oversee the registration of bitcoin exchanges without any regulatory guidelines. The current structure is likely to change by Q1 2017,” Crypto Coins News stated.
Crypto Coins News said the regulatory approach will likely be modeled after existing legal frameworks in the United States – such as New York state’s BitLicense – and Japan, where a recent bill was passed by the legislature to regulate bitcoin exchanges in the country.