South Korea’s 3rd-Largest Crypto Exchange Penalized For AML Breaches
Coinone’s chief government is dealing with an official reprimand after South Korean regulators moved towards the crypto trade for a string of compliance failures, together with tens of hundreds of unverified person accounts and repeated dealings with unlicensed international platforms.
Regulator Cites Tens Of Thousands Of Violations
South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit, working beneath the Financial Services Commission, discovered that Coinone failed to confirm the identities of customers in roughly 70,000 instances.
The trade was additionally accused of finishing buyer verification information even when key info was lacking — and of permitting transactions to proceed for purchasers whose identification checks had by no means been completed.
According to a number of South Korean media reports, the FIU flagged greater than 10,000 transactions carried out with 16 international exchanges that had no registration with South Korean regulators. Regulators had warned Coinone about these dealings earlier than. The trade saved going anyway.
South Korea’s FIU fined Coinone $4M and hit the trade with a three-month partial suspension over AML violations.
New clients are blocked from crypto deposits and withdrawals beginning April 29.
— Token Metrics (@tokenmetricsinc) April 13, 2026
The FIU fined Coinone 5.2 billion gained, equal to about $3.5 million. A 3-month partial enterprise suspension was additionally imposed, blocking new clients from depositing or withdrawing funds at some stage in the ban.
Chief government officer Cha Myung-hoon acquired a proper reprimand, although reviews word it carries no felony weight — the action is administrative in nature. Coinone has 10 days to problem the penalties earlier than they’re finalized.
Second Major Exchange Hit In A Month
This will not be the primary time South Korean authorities have gone after a serious trade in latest weeks. In March, Bithumb — the nation’s second-largest crypto platform by buying and selling quantity — was fined $24 million and handed a six-month partial suspension over related anti-money laundering failures.
That motion got here after Bithumb made headlines for a pricey clerical error: the trade by accident despatched clients 620,000 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $42 billion on the time, as a substitute of 620,000 Korean gained.
The blunder prompted the Bank of Korea to name on lawmakers to impose tighter controls on exchanges, together with buying and selling curbs that would kick in throughout uncommon market exercise or sharp value swings.
The trade, ranked third in South Korea by dimension, now joins Bithumb as targets of what seems to be a widening regulatory push towards crypto platforms within the nation.
Officials stated Monday that lawmakers ought to contemplate buying and selling halt mechanisms tied to irregular exercise — a proposal that indicators authorities are taking a look at structural fixes, not simply fines.
How Coinone responds to the FIU’s motion inside its 10-day window will probably form how the ultimate penalties are written.
Featured picture from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
