Three South Korean banks with crypto-exchange partnerships reportedly earned transaction fees of $ 14.71 million in the second quarter of 2021.
According to The Korea Herald, Shinban Bank, K Bank and NH Nonghyup Bank reported total revenues of 16.9 billion South Korean won in the second quarter.
The “Big Four” crypto exchanges in South Korea – Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit – have partnered with the banks to procure users’ real name accounts.
Based on data collected by Yun Chang-hyun, the second quarter’s performance surpassed the first quarter’s roughly $ 6.8 million (7 billion won) mark, more than doubling transactions despite continued market volatility.
The data shows that K-Bank’s partnership with Upbit raised the largest share of $ 10.4 million (12 billion won), which is over 71% of total revenue. In the first quarter, the bank earned 5.2 billion won through the crypto exchange partnership.
NH Nonghyup’s two-way partnership with Bithumb and Coinone wasn’t as impressive as K-Bank’s revenue. With Bithumb, the bank reported around $ 2.6 million (won) in earnings in the second quarter, while Coinone contributed $ 1.5 million (won 1.78 billion) for the full fiscal year.
The Shinhan Bank-Korbit partnership posted its lowest profit last quarter at nearly $ 0.3 million.
Pointing out that the number of user accounts in the South Korean market has quintupled this year alone, Chang-hyun added:
“Compared to the beginning of the year, the deposit balance has quadrupled and the coin craze has not yet ended, although Bitcoin prices have recently shot up again.”
Comparing the total amount of deposits attributed to real name accounts for crypto trading, South Korea saw a 316% increase after investing from $ 1.47 billion (1.7 trillion won) in 2020 to 6.14 Billion US dollars (7.08 trillion won) at the end of July 2021.
Related: South Korea Takes Action Against Unregistered Crypto Exchanges
South Korean regulators recently issued a warning to crypto exchanges to voluntarily register with local authorities until September 24th. The warning has been issued to all crypto exchanges that use the Korean language, Korean won, or serve the Korean market.
The penalty for companies that do not follow suit is imprisonment of up to five years or a fine of up to US $ 43,500 (50 million won).
