Upcoming Specific Financial Information Act impacts on Korean virtual assets industry.

Aprobit (www.aprobit.com) stops sharing order book with Bitfinex (www.bitfinex.com) "To comply with SFIA (Specific Financial Information Act)."

Aprobit, a Korean virtual asset exchange, stops sharing order books with foreign exchanges Bitfinex. This is to comply with the revised Specific Financial Information Act, which will take effect in March next year.

The Enforcement Decree of the SFIA announced last month contained the content that “by alliances with other virtual asset business operators, the act of allowing customers to trade virtual assets with customers of other virtual asset business entities is prohibited”. This means that order book sharing is prohibited.

The Korean Financial Information Analysis Institute (KoFIU) announced that it has prohibited the sharing of order books in order to achieve the purpose of the Special Money Laundering Act. The reason is that if you share your books with overseas exchanges, you cannot properly understand the customers of virtual asset business operators (overseas exchanges) who have not reported.

Accordingly, Aprobit also decided to operate independently. In the meantime, Aprobit has operated the won market by itself, and other markets such as BTC market have been operated in conjunction with Bitfinex, but will stop linking in accordance with regulations. Currently, both BTC and USD market transactions have ended.

Aprobit said that although liquidity and transaction volume are expected to decrease due to the suspension of order book sharing, it will create an independent trading environment through other businesses. It also said that the partnership with Bitfinex will continue.

Aprobit CEO Kim Byeong-joon said, “Many exchanges will suffer realistic damage such as liquidity supply burden and transaction volume reduction due to the interruption of order book sharing.” It was not so I decided to stop sharing.” He added, “We will create a unique trading environment for Aprobit in the new year by following the guidelines for reporting virtual asset business operators under the SFIA.”

There are still cases where domestic exchanges are burdened by the prohibition of sharing the order book. On the 24th, Binance KR, which shared the order book with Binance headquarters, announced the suspension of the exchange. It is known that the company decided to close the business due to poor transaction volume when the order book sharing was stopped.

​​Virtual asset trading is entering the institutional sphere, but there are more and more regulations accordingly. So the industry's response is paying attention.