South Korean crypto exchanges join forces to establish hotline to fight money laundering

Four leading South Korean exchanges are teaming up to fight potential money laundering and protect the interests of users, CoinDesk reported.

The partnering exchanges include Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Upbit. In an announcement last week, they said that they will create a hotline that will allow sharing real-time wallet information on suspicious or unusual trading activities.

The exchanges are seeking to identify possible links to phishing, predatory lending, pyramid schemes and other illicit activities, which could be shared via the hotline. In addition, the exchanges also plan to create and maintain a shared database of suspicious wallet addresses.

"They are now able to instantly check any wrongful transactions made at other exchanges and take necessary measures, such as blocking their own related accounts," an official of an operator said (as quoted by The Korea Herald).

"The cooperative step against money laundering via cryptocurrencies is expected to boost the soundness of the industry and to better protect consumers."

Cointelegraph reported that the South Korean government gave its approval to 7 domestic crypto exchanges out of 21 after a security audit which was conducted between September and December 2018. Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and four other exchanges were found to have satisfactory security measures in place.

In a recently published top 100 crypto exchanges according To The CER Cyber Security Score (CSS), Upbit claimed the 14th position with a score of 7.61 (out of 10), Coinone ranked 22nd with a score of 7.26, while Korbit took the 51st place with a score of 6.47. Bithumb, in contrast to the outcome of the government audit, was among the worst performers with a score of 4.67.