Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire plans to visit South Korea in April to meet with executives from multiple banks and exchanges to discuss USDC use cases, international payments cooperation, and its KRW stablecoin plans, with the goal of expanding USDC’s use in the Korean market.

The parent company of a South Korean CEX released its 2025 performance report, showing declines in both revenue and profit. Operating revenue was 15.6 trillion won, a year-on-year decrease of 10%, and net profit was 708.9 billion won, a year-on-year decline of 27.9%. The drop in performance was mainly due to the global economic downturn and a decrease in trading volume in the cryptocurrency market.

BlockBeats News, March 26 — According to official sources, Upbit has added Katana Network (KAT), supporting KRW, USDT, and BTC trading pairs.

Gate News reported that on March 19, influenced by news of a certain exchange launching ETHFI/KRW trading pair, ETHFI surged 20% in a short period and is now trading at $0.594.

The Korea National Tax Service is building a tracking system for cryptocurrency investment income, which will officially start taxing in 2027. The system will analyze transaction data, identify tax evasion behaviors, and is expected to go live within the year, incorporating artificial intelligence technology for abnormal transaction analysis. The tax standard applies a 22% rate to the portion of annual earnings exceeding 2.5 million Korean won.

The operator of Korea's token securities platform PIECE, Bycell Standard, has completed Series A funding of 4 billion KRW, with major investors including Xperix Group and S&S. The new funds will be used for acquiring core assets, recruiting talent, and applying for licensing in the investment sector.

Gate News Announcement: On March 9, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of South Korea issued a preliminary notice to a certain CEX for suspected violations of the "Specific Financial Transaction Information Act," engaging in transactions with unreported overseas virtual asset service providers, and inadequate KYC procedures. The exchange has been temporarily suspended for "6 months with partial operation." Responsible personnel will be held accountable. This restriction mainly affects the virtual asset withdrawal function for new users. Existing users' KRW and crypto asset deposits, withdrawals, and trading are temporarily unaffected.

The Goyang Branch of the District Court of the Government sentenced former police officer A to 6 years in prison and a fine of 10 billion Korean won for accepting a bribe of 120 million Korean won during a cryptocurrency scam investigation and for embezzling 7.88 million Korean won in false overtime allowances. Legal service personnel B involved in the case was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison, with a 4-year probation.

A seismic ruling has shaken South Korea's crypto industry. The Seoul Southern District Court sentenced Jong-hwan Lee, CEO of a domestic crypto asset management company, to three years in prison for manipulating token prices for profit, imposed a fine of 500 million KRW, and confiscated approximately 846 million KRW of illegal proceeds. The case involved illegal gains of about 7.1 billion KRW (approximately $48.8 million), marking the first conviction case since the implementation of South Korea's Virtual Asset User Protection Act. The court disclosed that between July 22, 2024, and October 25, 2024, Jong-hwan Lee used automated trading programs to create false trading volume and repeatedly issued wash trade instructions to manipulate the ACE token price. Data shows that before his operations, the token's average daily trading volume was only about 160,000 units, but it skyrocketed to 2.45 million units the day after the program was activated. Investigations found that approximately 89% of the trades were related to him.