April 20, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] The chief of Korea’s financial watchdog has warned against a bitcoin bubble, saying the price of the virtual currency may plunge in the future.

“I bet the bubble in bitcoin will burst later,” Choe Heung-sik, governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, told a year-end meeting with journalists on Dec. 27. “Companies existed during Korea’s IT bubble in the early 2000s, but that is not the case for bitcoin.”

The regulator hinted that Korea has no solution to the problem of bitcoin and other digital currencies and said governments across the globe appear to be in the same situation.

Asked about a government push to tax bitcoin transactions, Choe said that doesn’t mean Korea’s financial authorities have plans to regularize cryptocurrencies.  

He also drew the line at the possibility of establishing an official cryptocurrency exchange in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

“It is an issue to be reviewed carefully,” he said.

By Alex Lee and newswires (alexlee@heraldcorp.com)