South Korea's New Rule: Virtual Assets Included in Repayment Capacity Assessment
According to ChainCatcher citing Yonhap News, the South Korean government is improving the "New Start Fund" debt adjustment project for small business owners and self-employed individuals. The core change is the formal inclusion of virtual assets in the review process. Under the revised system, the debt relief rate will no longer be based solely on traditional financial statements but will consider the applicant's overall repayment capacity, which now explicitly includes their crypto asset holdings.
Previously, the "New Start Fund" relied primarily on financial statements submitted by applicants and data available through the public administrative information network to verify income and assets. This traditional approach was insufficient to identify personally held crypto investment assets, allowing some debtors to hide digital wealth and obtain higher relief. To address this loophole, since January 2026, after consultations with the five major won-based crypto exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, Gopax), the fund has introduced virtual asset balance certificates into its property assessment process.
Reform Details: Exchange Data Integration and Self-Certification Obligation
Operationally, applicants identified as members of these five exchanges must now directly submit virtual asset balance certificates to the fund. These certificates, issued by the exchanges, document the applicant's crypto holdings at a specific point in time. The fund's review team will recalculate the actual repayment capacity based on this data and determine the debt relief ratio. This mechanism embeds on-chain or exchange-level data verification into the credit assessment stage of debt adjustment, significantly enhancing asset transparency.
Notably, the government does not require exchanges to proactively push all user data to the fund. Instead, it adopts a model where "applicants voluntarily submit + exchanges cooperate in verification." This strikes a balance between privacy protection and regulatory needs. However, exchanges must still technically support standardized generation and anti-forgery verification of balance certificates.
Policy Implications: Crypto Assets' Role in Credit Finance Grows
This policy has dual significance for the Korean crypto market. On one hand, small business owners and self-employed individuals holding substantial crypto assets will no longer be able to conceal their digital wealth when applying for debt relief, potentially reducing the amount of relief they receive. On the other hand, this is the first time the Korean government has explicitly recognized the financial value of crypto assets in a debt restructuring context and integrated them into a formal credit assessment model. This sets a precedent for other financial scenarios, such as mortgage loans or credit card approvals, to reference crypto asset data in the future.
For crypto industry participants, this change signals that regulators are accelerating the construction of transparent oversight capabilities for personal digital assets. The data collaboration model between exchanges and government agencies is likely to expand from debt adjustment to taxation, anti-money laundering, and other fields. Debtors should be aware that on-chain assets are no longer a complete shield of privacy; the reach of regulatory scrutiny is extending into core areas of personal financial restructuring.