South Korea has taken a major step towards mainstreaming crypto as the country’s main financial regulator introduces new guidelines on security tokens.
Under the new guidelines, security tokens, defined as financial assets issued by a centralized party and tokenized on a blockchain, will be brought into a regulated environment with the same rules applicable to the country’s traditional financial market.
new guidelines were published on Monday by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea.
stablecoins exempted
According to the FSC, stable coins will not be defined as security tokens under the new regulations. It is also clear that tokens with no centralized issuer, in other words that are sufficiently decentralized, will fall outside the purview of the new rules.
,[…] “Digital assets related to securities must be issued and distributed in compliance with all securities regulations under the Capital Markets Act,” the FSC said on its website.
In terms of stablecoin regulation, South Korean regulators have previously indicated that they want to work with international counterpartsadding that the policy “should be formulated in a manner that is consistent with foreign regulations.”
mainstreaming crypto
The new plan to better regulate security tokens is seen as part of a wider effort to bring crypto into the mainstream in South Korea, and could also be seen as a de facto legalization of crypto.
The country is in the midst of a deep push to regulate the crypto sector, and legislators in the country’s parliament are currently considering 17 different regulatory frameworks related to crypto. The aim is that all new regulations will form part of a comprehensive legal framework for crypto known as the Digital Asset Basic Act.
Bitcoin is a commodity only in the US
In the US, Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has made it clear that when he sees bitcoin (btc) As a commodity given its level of decentralization, Other cryptocurrencies can be considered securities for regulatory purposes.
In the US context, such a distinction is extremely important, given that securities have traditionally been regulated in a more comprehensive manner than commodities.
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