After the hack of a relatively small South Korean exchange induced panic on the cryptocurrency market, Eric van Miltenburg—senior vice president at Ripple—said that the government should refrain from imposing more heavy restrictions on its own market.
“We just think it needs to be a regulation that balances the need to protect consumers without stalling or prohibiting innovation. We’ve seen that in other countries and in other technologies where you found a balance. Frankly if you think back to the early age of the internet, there were some people that only looked at the negative aspects of the internet saying we should shut it down for a while until we figure out what’s going on, and what’s good and what’s bad,” he said.
Van Miltenburg suggests that South Korea should have a “look at specific use cases” and ensure that regulations are made principally with user protection in mind. However, South Korea’s ban on ICOs is just one example of harsh reactions from the government in an attempt to combat fraud.
After that, we can also recall to a time when the country’s government was a hair away from banning cryptocurrency exchanges entirely and essentially terminating its status as the third-largest cryptocurrency market in the world.
Although the ban didn’t take effect due to strong opposition from politicians and the public, tensions are still high between the political class and exchanges. The hack of Coinrail, which resulted in calculated losses of $40 million, certainly didn’t help ease them.
Recent reactions by the peninsula’s government included raiding both Bithumb and Upbit, two of the largest Korean cryptocurrency exchanges, on suspicion of illicit financial activity. For all its trouble, authorities cleared both of any wrongdoing after they looked through their records thoroughly and found nothing.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
