Bank of Korea Surveys 31 Banks and Brokerages on Crypto Shocks

The Bank of Korea sent a questionnaire to 31 financial institutions on 23 October, asking what a shock in the crypto market would do to them. Eighteen banks and thirteen brokerages received it. The five largest Korean lenders are among the banks, which Bloomingbit names as KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori and NH NongHyup. Replies are due Wednesday. The exchange the central bank's hypotheticals turn on is named in none of the three accounts read here.

Three scenarios, or four

The institutions are asked to work through hypothetical events, and the accounts disagree on how many there are. Cointelegraph and Bloomingbit each give three.

The largest domestic exchange by market share suspends operations for a time after a major hack or a similar incident.
Crypto prices fall steeply, and the trading slump that follows lasts.
Another financial institution takes heavy losses from a crypto-related event.

TokenPost gives four, splitting the second of those into a sharp price fall and a prolonged drop in trading volume. The substance reads the same either way and the count does not, and nothing read here says which version matches the document. All three outlets are working from Korean-language reports and not from the questionnaire itself.

What the questionnaire asks

Beyond the shocks, the form is an inventory. Cointelegraph and TokenPost both list crypto-related staffing and budgets, current business activities and market-entry status, the reasons a firm entered the market at all, its own risk assessments and the measures it uses to manage them, and the sums it has invested in crypto companies at home and abroad. That last item is the one with a number attached, and no account read here reports what any firm answered. Bloomingbit's version of the list is shorter and carries no investment figures either. Cointelegraph calls this the central bank's first reported review of how financial institutions take part in the virtual asset market; the claim appears in that account alone.

A survey that predates the theft

The date on the questionnaire does some work. It went out on 23 October, nine days before the hot-wallet theft Binance put at $6.3 billion, so the exercise is not an answer to that incident. Korean regulators were already moving on operational risk. The Financial Services Commission proposed tighter security requirements in October after finding deficiencies at 130 of 555 financial companies, on Cointelegraph's account, which is the only one here that carries the figure. The central bank has its own file on digital assets, including a study of dollar stablecoin demand in weaker currencies and a push for bank-led stablecoin issuance.

"Financial institutions are making their own preparations," an unnamed Bank of Korea official said, in remarks The Korea Herald carried and Cointelegraph relayed.

The same official put virtual asset legislation behind what the market expected. Neither line was confirmed at this desk, and one of the three accounts carries both.

Wednesday, and then what

Nothing in the three accounts says the Bank of Korea will publish the answers. A questionnaire on staffing, budgets and investment sums is supervisory groundwork, and the replies would normally stay inside the central bank. Bloomingbit dates the deadline to 4 November; Cointelegraph says only that responses are reportedly due Wednesday, which is the same day. What the exercise feeds into is easier to see than what it will produce. Disagreement over who may issue a won stablecoin has already slowed the Digital Asset Basic Act, on Cointelegraph's reading, and the same unsettled question sits under Korea's review of legalizing crypto market making. A set of bank answers about exposure gives the central bank something to argue from. Whether any of it becomes public is not something it has said.