Bithumb, the largest exchange in South Korea and seventh in the world by volume, was found not to be in violation of any policies established by financial authorities in the country.
Concerns earlier this year in South Korea made the government rather apprehensive of cryptocurrency exchanges, going as far as even discussing a ban on digital coins due to possible associations to money laundering and other criminal activities.
This hysteria included raids on both Upbit and Bithumb, two of the country’s largest exchanges, in an attempt to find evidence of wrongdoing. The authorities involved in the investigation included the National Tax Service, the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, and the Financial Services Commission.
The Upbit investigation ultimately came up with no sign of wrongdoing, with the company then showing the results of the audit to the public to reinvigorate its confidence in the exchange.
The results of the Bithumb investigation took a bit longer to announce, but the NTS said that they’d already finished it near the end of April.
“The NTS conducted a tax investigation on Bithumb for the 2014 to 2017 business years. I know that Bithumb decided to pay taxes without any objection to the imposed tax amount. However, despite the fact that a large amount of tax was imposed, no charge of tax evasion was found, so prosecution charges against [Bithumb] were not carried out,” a tax official familiar with the investigation said.
Bithumb now has a tax bill of 30 billion won to pay, which amounts to roughly $28 million.
A tax bill that big isn’t very surprising, as the platform charges average fees of 0.3% on roughly $250 million in transactions per day.
If Bithumb charges this much for trades, that would mean that the company makes a staggering figure of roughly $750,000 per day, which amounts to almost $274 million per year.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
