Bithumb wins court relief in South Korea as judge lifts six-month suspension despite $24.6M fine from financial watchdog

Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest crypto exchanges, won temporary court relief after the Seoul Administrative Court suspended a six-month partial business ban imposed by the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). The regulator had also fined the exchange 36.8 billion won, or about $24.6 million, over alleged anti-money-laundering and customer-verification failures, including claims that it had not properly identified millions of users. The court’s stay means the disputed sanction will not take effect while Bithumb’s challenge is pending. The case matters because it sits inside a broader South Korean crackdown on major exchange compliance breaches. The FIU has been stepping up enforcement under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, and Bithumb’s dispute follows similar actions against other domestic exchanges. For Bithumb, the immediate significance is operational: the stay preserves its ability to keep core services running while the legal fight continues, rather than facing an abrupt restriction on new-user transfers and related business activity.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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