South Korean Exchange No Longer Permitting Withdrawals to Unverifiable External Wallets

This past Wednesday, Coinone, one of the “Big Four” cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea, reported that it would no longer be willing to permit withdrawals to unverified external wallets.  This particular change will be brought about on January 24, 2022, which suggests that Coinone users will need to register their external wallets with the exchange.  Otherwise, they will not be able to take out any money that is kept within their exchange accounts.

 "If you need to withdraw Coinone's virtual assets to another virtual asset wallet from January 24, 2022, in accordance with the fulfillment of the customer verification system obligation, you must register the wallet address to be able to withdraw,” reported the exchange.

 External wallets involve any kind of wallet that third parties provide, particularly “hot” (online) and “cold” (offline) storage choices.  The wallets must be verifiable in some way, or have know-your-customer data set into place.

 "It is impossible to register a wallet address that cannot verify identity information," stated Coinone.

 The reason for Coinone’s change in methods is mainly because it would like to guarantee that customers are not utilizing cryptocurrency for purposes of illegal transactions, like money laundering.  Therefore, it would need customers to register their wallets in order to take out money. 

 Some of the required information that customers would need to enter is their full names, email addresses, and mobile phone numbers, in order to verify their identities.  This would also mean that customers are unable to register others’ wallets. 

Other Korean crypto exchanges will most likely come out with similar methods in order to limit illegal transactions, such as Upbit, Bithumb, and Korbit. 

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