South Korea is about to see where its crypto users send their coins, under a crypto law that takes effect in December. A Bank of Korea (BOK) draft reporting manual would make domestic exchanges report every cross-border crypto transfer by 11:00 the next business day, plus a monthly balance report covering each user who has made a cross-border transfer at least once since 19 July 2024. Opposition lawmaker Park Soo-young’s office counts 1,272,878 such users at the five main exchanges. The Seoul Economic Daily and Digital Asset reported the manual on 23 October 2026; the Special Times wrote that the BOK sent the draft to the exchange association DAXA on 2 October.
That law is an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, already passed and due to take effect on 3 December. The BOK plans to settle the content and scope of the reports in November, and a senior BOK official told the Seoul Economic Daily that the bank is weighing a lighter version.
A second, separate step is coming. In its report to the National Assembly’s annual audit, the BOK said it will draft with the government, this year, another amendment to the same Act so that stablecoins can be regulated as a means of payment. That text does not exist yet. No primary document of either measure is online, so everything below comes from the Korean and English outlets that saw the BOK material, and each point names the outlet.
South Korea crypto reporting rules: daily transfers and month-end balances
The manual is a handbook on foreign exchange network reporting for virtual asset transfer operators. It describes two reports. Both go to the BOK’s foreign exchange information network; the central bank is the designated collector of foreign exchange data and will use the files to monitor money and crypto crossing the border, the Seoul Economic Daily explained. That monitoring sits apart from the anti-money-laundering checks the financial regulators already run.
The daily report: every transfer in or out, by 11:00 the next business day
Each day, an exchange would report the cross-border outflows and inflows completed that day by 11:00 on the next business day. Weekend and holiday transfers can be filed together on the next business day. Each line carries the date and time, the asset and its quantity, the value in won, the fees and data on the sender and the recipient. The Seoul Economic Daily gave two typical cases: bitcoin bought on a Korean exchange and sent to a foreign exchange, and coins moved from a Korean provider to a personal wallet. The Special Times reported that the draft also lists resident registration numbers, the national identity number every Korean holds.
Transfers that go straight from one personal wallet to another, with no provider in the middle, are not reported, the Seoul Economic Daily noted. The scheme sees what passes through a Korean platform.
The monthly report: holdings at 23:59:59 on the last day of the month
The second report is the one that drew criticism. On a new form, coded FX1021, exchanges would give for each covered user the month-end holdings in quantity and in won, plus the month’s total inflows from abroad and outflows abroad. The balance is taken at 23:59:59 on the last calendar day of the month, business day or not, and the file is due by 17:30 on the 10th of the following month, according to Digital Asset.
Activity is not the test. The draft covers every user who has ever transferred crypto across the border, to a foreign exchange or a personal wallet, counted from 19 July 2024, the day the Virtual Asset User Protection Act took effect. Such a user stays in the monthly file even in a month with no transfer at all. Dormant accounts, delisted coins and staked assets count. Delisted or airdropped tokens with no price on the exchange would be valued from another Korean exchange or from CoinMarketCap.
A user who leaves the exchange or whose balance falls to zero is still included that month, then drops out the next one, Digital Asset wrote. If a balance appears again, so does the user.
| Item | Daily transfer report | Monthly balance report (form FX1021) |
|---|---|---|
| Who is covered | Every cross-border transfer through a domestic exchange | Every user with at least one cross-border transfer since 19 July 2024 |
| What is reported | Date and time, asset, quantity, won value, fees, sender and recipient | Month-end holdings (quantity and won), monthly inflows from and outflows abroad |
| Cut-off | The previous day | 23:59:59 on the last calendar day of the month |
| Deadline | 11:00 on the next business day | 17:30 on the 10th of the next month |
| Left out | Wallet-to-wallet transfers without a provider | Nothing named; dormant accounts, delisted and staked assets are included |
Source: BOK draft manual as reported by the Seoul Economic Daily, Digital Asset and the Special Times on 23 October 2026. Details may change before the final version in November.
1,272,878 users with a cross-border transfer since July 2024
The number comes from Park Soo-young’s office: 1,272,878 users of the five main Korean exchanges made at least one cross-border transfer between 19 July 2024 and 30 September 2026, the Seoul Economic Daily and the Special Times reported. Under the draft as written, each of them would appear in a monthly file sent to the central bank for as long as they hold coins on a Korean exchange.
Park, of the People Power Party, the main opposition party, said that looking into all of a user’s information because of a single transfer abroad is excessive collection of personal data, according to the Special Times. He warned that gathering that much data on assets and trades could shrink the market.
In practice, someone who moved a few coins to a foreign exchange in 2024 and never did it again would still have a month-end balance reported every month, delisted coins and staking positions included.
The Bank of Korea is already studying a lighter version
The BOK calls the manual a draft. According to the Seoul Economic Daily, the original plan was the one above: everyone with a transfer since 19 July 2024, reported even in quiet months. A senior BOK official told the paper that some operators complain of technical difficulty and a lack of staff in applying the rule back to July 2024, and that the bank is considering easing it so that it applies from 3 December, the day the law takes effect.
A BOK official quoted by the Special Times described the same shift: talks have restarted on counting only users with a transfer from December onward. Separately, Digital Asset reported that the manual itself leaves open whether exchanges must also file the past transfer records from July 2024 to the start date.
The official told the Seoul Economic Daily the bank is also reviewing the balance report “proactively”, including a large cut in its scope (our translation), and may scale the burden to an operator’s size and trading volume. A busy large exchange and a small platform with almost no trades may not need the same rules for the monitoring to work, he said. The BOK plans to fix the content and scope in November, after talks with the Ministry of Finance and Economy, other agencies and the operators.
No outlet gave a figure for how many of the 1.27 million users would stay in scope after such a change, or named any threshold.
The law behind the reports: an amendment passed in May
The reporting regime is not the central bank’s own invention. It carries out an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act passed by the National Assembly on 7 May 2026, promulgated on 2 June 2026 and due to take effect on 3 December 2026, according to a legal analysis in Law Times (22 October). The amendment adds definitions of virtual assets, virtual asset service providers and virtual asset transfer business: a provider moving crypto between Korea and other countries through buying, selling or exchanging it, plus acts with substantially the same effect, to be set by decree.
The draft enforcement decree fills in that second part with transfers between a provider and a crypto address that does not go through a provider, in other words a self-hosted wallet. The government looked at covering only transfers between platforms and rejected it, Law Times reported, because coins sent to a personal wallet are hard to trace afterwards and leaving them out would open a large monitoring gap.
A provider that wants to run this business must register with the Minister of Finance and Economy. It needs to have filed its report under Korea’s anti-money-laundering law on specific financial information, connect to the BOK network, and meet the decree’s equipment and staff rules: at least two people per office with two years in foreign exchange work or the ministry’s training. Running the business unregistered is a criminal offence, Law Times noted; under the Act, unregistered foreign exchange business carries up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 300 million won.
The Ministry of Finance and Economy published the draft decree on 7 October 2026 for public comment until 26 October. After regulatory review, a legal check and a Cabinet vote, it is meant to take effect with the law on 3 December. Transfer records go to the BOK network and are to be shared with the National Tax Service, the Korea Customs Service, the Financial Supervisory Service and the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, Law Times wrote. To limit the burden, the government says reports will be limited to data providers can collect in their normal work, and small operators may connect through a relay institution.
The ministry’s regulatory impact analysis gives the reason, as Law Times summarised it: of 14.5 trillion won in foreign exchange crimes found by the Korea Customs Service from 2021 to 2025, 11.4 trillion won, or 79%, involved virtual assets.
Digital Asset gives 2 December as the start of the reports; the other outlets and the law’s own date say 3 December.
The tax service is one of the bodies due to receive the data. Korea’s 22% tax on crypto gains above 2.5 million won a year is scheduled for 1 January 2027, a date still under debate, as we reported in our piece on a possible fourth delay of the Korean crypto tax.
Stablecoin law: a second amendment, not yet written
The stablecoin part of the story is a separate measure at an earlier stage. In its work report for the annual audit, seen on 22 October, the BOK said it is preparing a monitoring system for virtual assets, including reporting through the foreign exchange network, and that it plans to draft with the government this year an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act to regulate stablecoins as a means of payment, Digital Asset reported. The Block relayed the same material in English on 23 October.
That sentence is the only place where the two measures meet. The BOK gave no text, no rule for issuers, no threshold and no submission date beyond “this year”. Calling it a plan with a timetable would go further than the source.
Why it matters, in legal terms: Korean exchanges already trade won against USDT, USDC and other stablecoins, but stablecoins are not on the Act’s list of means of payment, so that trading does not count as currency exchange, Law Times explained. The May amendment brings the platforms into the reporting system without changing that status. An amendment that names stablecoins as a means of payment would.
The BOK gave its reasons, according to Digital Asset. Crypto can move across borders and settle payments without a financial institution, and mixers and the global gap in rules for personal wallets make illegal transactions easier. The bank said it will keep working with ministries to limit trades that exploit a temporary legislative gap while the government’s digital asset laws are prepared, and it wants an international cooperation framework against illegal transactions.
The audit report answers what lawmakers asked for last year: bring payment infrastructure up to global standards, for instance by extending the large-value payment system’s hours to 8 p.m., and guard against money laundering as global crypto exchanges enter Korea.
Where the Digital Asset Basic Act fits
The broader bill is a third piece. The Digital Asset Basic Act, which would cover exchange licensing and stablecoin issuance, has not yet been introduced. Financial Services Commission chairman Lee Eog-weon told a hearing on Thursday 22 October that discussions on it were nearing completion and that the government would introduce it as soon as possible, The Block reported. Korean companies are preparing for won stablecoins in the meantime, as with the partnership between Chainlink and LG CNS, which named no stablecoin, bank or date. For a refresher on how these tokens work, see our guide what are stablecoins.
What changes for users of Korean exchanges
A user who keeps everything on a Korean exchange and never sends coins abroad is not in the monthly file under the draft. A user who withdraws once to a foreign exchange or to a personal wallet would be, and would stay there while holding coins on the exchange, unless the November version narrows it.
Because the draft decree counts transfers to a self-hosted wallet, self-custody enters the scheme at the moment coins leave the exchange. Law Times pointed to a legal question here: a resident moving coins from a Korean account to a wallet the same person controls has no visible foreign element, and the law left the test to the decree rather than writing it into the Act. Since unregistered business is a crime, courts may read that decree strictly.
For exchanges, the work is the daily feed, the monthly file, the registration and the staffing rule. Operators have already told the BOK that the look-back to July 2024 is hard to deliver, according to the Seoul Economic Daily.
How the EU’s DAC8 compares
European readers have a reference point. Under Council Directive (EU) 2023/2226 of 17 October 2023, known as DAC8, crypto-asset service providers collect data on their customers’ transactions over each calendar year and report it to their national tax authority the following year; EU countries apply the rules from 1 January 2026, and the first exchange of that data between tax authorities, for 2026, is due by 30 September 2027, according to the European Commission’s DAC8 page. The page describes yearly aggregates per crypto-asset (amounts paid and received, and the value of transfers), sent to tax offices. It does not mention month-end balances.
Korea’s draft goes further in frequency and in who receives it: each cross-border transfer the next business day and each covered user’s balance every month, filed with the central bank. Our page on the first DAC8 data exchange in September 2027 has the EU timetable.
What is still unknown, and the dates to watch
- 26 October 2026: the comment period on the draft enforcement decree closes.
- November: the BOK plans to confirm the content and scope of the reports after talks with the Ministry of Finance and Economy and the operators.
- Whether the monthly report counts users from 19 July 2024 or only from 3 December, and whether past transfer records must be filed.
- How many of the 1,272,878 users would stay in the monthly report if the BOK narrows it, and on what criteria.
- Whether resident registration numbers stay in the daily report, as the draft described by the Special Times has it.
- The stablecoin amendment: the BOK says it will be drafted with the government this year; no text or submission date is public.
The law takes effect on Thursday 3 December. Under the draft manual, transfers completed that day would be due at the BOK by 11:00 on Friday 4 December.