South Korean Central Bank Chief Says, “Bitcoin Is A Commodity And Not A Currency”

The top boss of South Korea’s Central Bank has clearly stated that Bitcoin needs to be classified as a commodity rather than the growing trend of accepting it as a currency. Lee Ju-yeol, the Bank of Korea governor recently revealed that it is impossible to impart the legal fiat tag to cryptocurrencies as reported by Seoul-Yonhap News. This announcement comes in the aftermath of the September ban on all ICO offerings. Lee was recently quoted as saying, “Regulation (for virtual currencies) is appropriate because it is regarded as a commodity, not at the level of legal currency,” during the government audit conducted by the country’s legislative body National Assembly.He also added that, “It is not a situation for the Bank of Korea to take such an action at the present.”

Also Read : Bitcoin to be soon recognized in Russia as Digital Commodity, and taxed accordingly

Given the fact that work in this field has advanced already in bits and pieces, Lee could be seen throwing his political weight for bringing forth such legislative solutions which could regulate the space notably. Certain lawmakers had argued in favour of tightening regulations for applying the same on cryptocurrency exchanges of South Korea back in August. The main motive behind the same was hiking up trade volume over and above that of last year.

Also Read: Bank Of Korea Promises To Speed Up Its Cryptocurrency Research

The financial regulator of the country also took a significant step in cracking down activities related to ICO funding model last month. Lee agreed to the fact that Central Bank of Korea is fully capable of conducting further research on cryptocurrency related areas along with the blockchain plethora on a generic level during the legislative session held recently. He was quoted as saying:

“We also refer to a lot of virtual currency research conducted in countries like Sweden. The Bank of Korea will also put more emphasis on virtual currency research.”

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