South Korea’s northeastern and second-largest city Busan has announced it would drop most of its cryptocurrency partners on centralised global exchanges. The decision comes after several prominent exchanges and projects – FTX, Terra/Luna, and Voyager – collapsed in recent months.
The coastal city has been named South Korea’s blockchain capital and recently revealed an 18-person steering committee. None of the people sitting on the body were from major centralised platforms, including Binance, Gate.io, Huobi Global, FTX, and Crypto.com.
The steering committee aims to advise government authorities and investors on operating cryptocurrencies along with other digital assets. It also hopes to deepen cooperation for cryptocurrency frameworks and cooperate with foreign entities.
Second Thoughts?
News of FTX’s collapse forced Busan authorities to rethink including centralised exchanges. However, it stated it could proceed with its plans without assistance from outside sources.
According to reports, committee members stated problems with crypto platforms like FTX and others “seem to have influenced [the decision].” Other stated centralised exchanges were never included in city and supported initial liquidity offerings.
The city also plans to outline how it will separate securities and non-securities assets, along with listing and monitoring channels for assets. It established a fund for the initiative in the first half of the year, leading to the city founding a regulation-free zone for blockchain in July 2019.
Efforts to back the initiative increased after telecoms giant Korea Telecom (KT) collaborated with the city to develop infrastructure to support blockchain technologies.
