Bank deposits by South Korean individuals to trade on the country’s four major digital coin exchanges have neared $8 billion as of last month despite the toughened regulations on real-name crypto currency and trade.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) data obtained by Rep. Yoon Chang-hyun of the main opposition People Power Party, Korean won-denominated deposit balance in the country’s top 4 digital coin exchanges – Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit – reached 9.2 trillion won ($7.7 billion) as of September, up 1,368 percent from June last year.

The deposit volume first surpassed 1 trillion won in July 2020 and since November, it has sharply increased and even topped 10 trillion won in April and May this year.

The number of real-name bank accounts that the four exchanges have under contracts with the country’s commercial lenders also soared 777 percent from 836,847 in June 2020 to 7,336,819 in September 2021. Under the nation’s anti-money laundering regulation, digital token exchanges are required to offer real-name accounts backed by commercial banks to service digital coin trading in Korean won.

The number of real-name accounts has been growing steadily since it first exceeded 1 million in August 2020 to surpass 2 million in February and 7 million in August.

The exchanges also paid more fees to banks on the sharp increase in cryptocurrency transactions. Banks in real name-account partnership with the exchanges including K-Bank, Nonghyup Bank and Shinhan Bank received 16.9 billion won in crypto trading fees from April to June this year, more than doubling from 7.05 billion won and up 31,389 percent from 522 million won in the third quarter last year.

By Pulse

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