On June 2, a South Korean court ordered a freeze on all the cryptocurrency wallets, securities deposits, and stocks account owned by Cho Ju-bin, the suspected head of Nth Room. Nth Room is a Telegram channel under investigation for circulating child pornography. According to KBS Korea, the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Settlement Division 30, led by Judge Lee Hyun-woo, accepted the request from prosecutors in the South Korean capital to freeze 15 cryptocurrencies wallets that reportedly belong to Cho. The funds within the confiscated are suspected of clarifying the profits that the defendant would have obtained as the mastermind …

Binance Korea will be monitoring activity on its platform for signs of money laundering thanks to a solution developed by Coinfirm. The partnership, announced on Monday, will help Binance’s Korea branch remain compliant with Anti-Money Laundering egulations resulting from the Financial Action Task Force’s Travel Rule. Coinfirm provides a blockchain-agnostic AML platform offered to various institutions dealing with cryptocurrencies. Their previous clients include European banks, blockchain projects such as XRP and RSK, custodians such as Xapo and the government of Gibraltar. As Cointelegraph previously reported, Binance already integrated Coinfirm’s solution on its main platform back in October. Nevertheless, the main …

Although the company made no official announcement, South Korean tech conglomerate Samsung Electronics seems to have been appointed a new Vice President in its AI PM Group / Blockchain Dev Group. Woong Ah-yoon, a former chief architect of Blockchain Solutions for Healthcare and Life Sciences at IBM, recently updated his LinkedIn profile with the new role. However, according to the information provided, he has been reportedly holding the position since January 2020. According to the local media Fn News, Woong will expand and reorganize the Blockchain Task Force division of Samsung, which currently operates as a temporary organization within the …

ICON (ICX), South Korea’s largest public blockchain project, released its Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP) on May 28. The protocol enables interoperability between individual blockchains, facilitating value transfer, service invocation and data exchange. Connecting the chains As blockchain technology has evolved, the multitude of competing networks springing up have largely been content to isolate themselves, occasionally looking at others for inspiration, but rarely fully interacting with one another. ICON however, has always stated its mission to “Hyperconnect the World”, and this latest release is a large step towards that goal. BTP is an interoperability protocol, which allows distinct stand-alone blockchains to …

LG Electronics has joined the governing council of Hedera Hashgraph, the enterprise-grade public distributed ledger platform. LG serves as the council’s fourteenth member, sitting alongside Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, Google, IBM, Tata Communications, and other leading organizations. Hedera Hashgraph CEO Mance Harmon told Cointelegraph that LG is the first home appliance manufacturer to join the Hedera Governing Council. Harmon noted that LG will specifically work with the other council members to identify ways that distributed ledger technology, or DLT, can benefit consumers and supply chain partners, saying: “LG has fantastic use cases and reach, and although we aren’t prepared to talk …

South Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance is preparing an amendment to apply to the nation’s Income Tax Law. This could include rules for profitable sales of cryptocurrencies as well as profits from national crypto mining projects. According to local newspaper E Daily on May 27, the ministry also mentioned including the profits generated by initial coin offerings, or ICOs. This is tantamount to a change in the country’s rhetoric towards ICOs, which are still banned across the country. The report specifies that crypto-to-crypto transactions, such as Bitcoin (BTC), will be “likely” exempt from the proposed amendment and only seeks …

LG has partnered with United States-based company Evernym to develop blockchain ID technology. Asian financial news outlet Aju Business Daily reported on May 26 that LG CNS — LG’s IT services subsidiary — signed a memorandum of understanding with Evernym. The collaboration between the two firms aims to develop international digital identity standards at the World Wide Web Consortium. A new identity standard for the web To establish the new standard, the two firms decided to jointly develop a blockchain-based decentralized authentication system to replace international driver's licenses and passports. Evernym already launched Sovrin, a platform aiming to enable organizations …

Daejeon University is the latest in a series of South Korean universities redesigning portions of its finance and technology departments. The university made an official announcement on May 25 that it would open a new fintech department called “Future Convergence.” According to the announcement published by Daejeon Journal, the curriculum will consist of topics such as smart health care, smart city, smart factory, and various employment fields in the medical institutions by implementing blockchain technology. Universities in South Korea are boosting educational programming related to blockchain, big data, and artificial intelligence amid the country’s crisis of college graduates who are …

South Korea’s Suseong University reached a deal on May 22 with the Korea Artificial Intelligence Association, or KORAIA, to create a blockchain and AI campus in Daegu. According to the announcement published by local media outlet Money Today, the Daegu-based university plans to teach about AI, big data, and cloud-based technology in the brand-new department. They intend to begin accepting students by 2021. COVID-19 crisis as a potential for blockchain adoption growing Kim Kun-woo, director of the Planning and Coordination Division of the university, praised the announcement. He stated that the world is “rapidly” changing to a blockchain and AI-based …

South Korea's central bank, the Bank of Korea, has conducted new research and analysis on the progress of central bank digital currencies — or CBDCs — around the world. The bank released its “Overseas CBDC Progress Report” on May 18, in which the institution analyzed the CBDC projects of 14 central banks. New tech is a catalysts for CBDC projects The bank found that recent advances in payment settlements, decentralized ledger technology and the sharp declines in cash use are the main factors driving central banks to research and develop CBDCs. Most central banks in the report are currently developing …

Crypto is a place where everything changes faster than in any other industry, and seeing as it was born in the age of the internet, this is quite fitting. Today, China is leading the global digital asset initiative. The train of innovations seems to go faster as the digital yuan (also referred to as DCEP) has fueled rapid development in the field of distributed ledger technology. Instead of wallowing in a swamp of regulatory uncertainty, the Chinese government shifted its attention to benefits. The Chinese have not wasted time, and despite being the country where the new coronavirus started and …

Cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb officially announced that they will be delisting Monero (XMR) from their trading platform as of June 1. According to local media outlet Newsway, Bithumb’s delisting auditory board decided to permanently remove the coin after it was provisionally delisted in April. Recently, Monero has been in the spotlight due to reports of Telegram users using XMR to purchase illegal pornographic material — much of which involved minors. Monero reportedly the Nth room’s favorite crypto Due to the security infrastructure that protects the identities behind XMR transactions, Monero was allegedly the preferred crypto used by the sexual video ring. …