Bitcoin Regulation Boss Dies

The South Korean cryptocurrency regulation boss has been found dead at his Seoul home. Jung Ki-joon, the Head of the Economic Policy Coordination Office for the South Korean Government, was in charge of developing policies to regulate Bitcoin, is believed to have suffered a heart attack whilst he was sleeping. He was found be family members who went to wake him in the morning. He took up his role of leading the Seoul crack down on the cryptocurrency industry at the latter end of last year, and just last month his efforts were shown, as South Korea introduced a range of measures that were aimed at regulating cryptocurrencies, and in particular, Bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum. The regulations were quite extreme, and saw a ban of anonymous trading. This was to reduce the amount of possible criminal activities. His role came with a lot of responsibilities, namely being in charge of coordinating the opinions of different ministries and offices within the Government on cryptocurrency regulations. However, these strict regulations then saw the price of Bitcoin plummet last month. Despite seeing an all time high of nearly $20,000 in December last year, it had halved in value and dropped to below $10,000 by the end of January.

Before he passed away, Jung controversially announced that the government was actually considering banning all cryptocurrencies, saying; “The proposed shutdown of exchanges that the justice minister mentioned recently is one of the measures suggested by the justice ministry to curb speculation.” This extreme decision came after a long period of consideration over the perceived threats that digital assets could pose to economic stability. Mr Jung’s job was no doubt incredibly stressful and this has led some of his colleagues to believe that this may have been a contributing factor in his death. Image Source: Pxhere