ICICI blocks crypto transfers; Korea banks to report crypto crime

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, July 14th, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Coming up, India’s ICICI Bank blocks international crypto transfers. Korea says banks must report crypto-related money laundering crimes and fears over plagiarism hit the NFT world.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

India’s ongoing crypto acceptance saga has taken another turn. One of the country’s leading financial institutions, ICICI Bank, has warned against using its international remittance services for transferring any form of cryptocurrency.

The Bharat Express reports that bank customers must declare that remittances will not be used for investment in or purchase of any crypto or virtual currencies.

Customers also being warned that funds should not be transferred to any businesses dealing in crypto, nor can they be in the proceeds from investments in cryptocurrency.

The CEO of Indian trading platform Unocoin says investors may not be overly worried, though, as the domestic market is healthy.

“In India itself, the market is quite mature. We have here up to US$100 million in wallets sometimes.”

India’s banks have been seeking to limit exposure to cryptocurrencies since the Reserve Bank of India, or the RBI, issued a circular in crypto in 2018. Despite the ban being overturned by the Supreme Court a year later, confusion still exists over the status of crypto in India. That’s because lawmakers are still considering legislation that could outright ban crypto in the country altogether, and so each development in the country is an important clue to what will ultimately happen in India.

Same could be said about South Korea. Korea’s National Assembly scrutiny of crypto industry regulations continues.

The latest: authorities say banks will not be reprimanded in money laundering cases involving crypto exchanges. That is, of course, if they report the crime first.

However, if the Financial Intelligence Unit is not informed about anything banks witness, then the banks will be blamed.

That’s in addition to Financial Services Commission had Eun Sung-soo saying that foreign crypto exchanges dealing with Korean investors will have to abide by the same stringent rules that domestic exchanges must comply with.

Now four crypto bills were also on the table at the recent National Assembly meeting with Eun saying the FSC is studying and reviewing them all with the assistance of both the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Finance.

And now on to the markets: Bitcoin down almost 4% at just under US$32,000. That’s as of 4 p.m. Hong Kong time today at the end of the Asian trading day
And in the top 10 for cryptocurrencies, Polkadot almost down 9% and Cardano down just over seven.

Meanwhile, the eastern Chinese province of Anhui has become the latest to halt crypto mining.

Local media outlet Hefei 365 reports that scarcity of electricity triggered the ban, with the local energy bureau predicting that demand will reach 1.5 times the current supply level by 2024.

Now authorities have already halted mining operations in Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, prompting a mass exodus of miners from China.

Despite the bans, though, one player in the industry says miners should not just leave.

“If miners go overseas, unorganized and without strategy, each for himself, it can result in a price rise in the market. I hope that the Chinese mining companies can save themselves but they must keep a calm mind.”

And here’s a little bit of a twist.

Coverage of this mining exodus story in China has also fuelled concerns over plagiarism in the NFT world after an image used to illustrate the story went viral.

That photo of a woman holding disused mining rig gear was originally That photo of a woman holding disused mining rig gear was originally published by China’s Caixin Media.

It’s now been used to create a number of NFTs which are available for sale on the Opensea NFT platform. However, the artist has chosen to remain anonymous, which raises questions over whether they had permission to use the photo in the first place.

Forkast.News has asked Caixin for comment, but received no response by the time of this report.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.