The Korean government will announce the results of its survey of initial coin offerings (ICOs) by the end of this month. The government is likely to keep its position of “banning all types of ICOs across the board.”

“The results of the ICO survey, which has been implemented under the initiative of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, have been put on the agenda at the office’s task force meeting,” said an official at a financial regulatory body Thursday, adding that “how to regulate ICOs will be discussed at a meeting of vice ministers.” The government plans to announce the results of the ICO survey based on what would be discussed in the meeting.

In September last year, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) sent official documents to 22 companies that had finished or were preparing to conduct ICOs to figure out how ICOs were carried out in Korea. A total of 52 questions were contained in the document and they included the status of shareholder executives, why ICOs were conducted abroad, amounts of tokens allotted for residents in Korea, progress of domestic PR activities and characteristics of tokens.

The government’s planned announcement on ICOs was met with a chilly reception. That’s primarily because the government’s position on cryptocurrencies is likely to remain intact. Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku evaluated companies’ ICOs in terms of business concreteness and cash refund procedures as “very insufficient” last December. Also, it is said that skeptical views on cryptocurrencies and ICOs remain the same within the financial authorities.

“We will sort out a reasonable outcome after collecting opinions from related ministries. The government has yet to decide on its position,” an FSS official said.

Some people questioned the survey itself, saying it was just a policy show-off. An official at a company that had complied with the survey said not all firms responded to the survey because of the absence of coercion, noting that it’s also questionable that the results of the survey would reflect our domestic circumstances due to the ambiguity in choosing the companies to be surveyed.

A spokesperson at another company said, “Some projects that had not been implementing ICOs at the time escaped being questioned. There was controversy on the selection of the surveyed companies from the beginning.”

That the survey was conducted by the disclosure review office of the FSS is another cause for concern. The FSS is running a blockchain research team under its fintech support office. In fact, the survey was conducted not by the fintech support office that had been studying blockchain primarily but by the disclosure review office. The disclosure review office is in charge of analyzing and managing disclosure materials of listed companies, checking disclosure rules and investigating and sanctioning disclosure violations. /edshin@decenter.kr

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