South Korean Politician’s Own Party Will Investigate Him for Irregular Token Trading 

Kim Nam-kuk, a member of South Korea’s Democratic Party, is said to have owned 800,000 wemix coins in 2021

article-image

sayan uranan/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

South Korean representative Kim Nam-kuk’s own party, the nation’s Democratic party, has urged him to sell all of his digital assets and will launch an investigation into his token trading practices. 

This comes after a number of his undisclosed positions were exposed by various Asian outlets two years ago. Blockworks is not privy to Kim’s current holdings, but reports claimed that he owned around 800,000 wemix coins in 2021, worth about $4.5 million at that time.

Kim might have withdrawn all his Wemix tokens before March 2022 when South Korea’s travel rule took effect. This rule mandated that all exchanges in the country need to flag crypto transfers over 1 million won (approximately $757), Yonhap News Agency reported

Senior Democratic party spokesperson Kwon Chil-seung was confident that Kim would comply with investigators and his colleagues’ recommendations.

“As we have recommended he sell off his cryptocurrency assets, we believe he will comply,” Kwon told reporters. 

In addition to allegations of withdrawing all his tokens before the critical travel rule hampered his efforts, Kim co-sponsored legislation that would have delayed income taxation on crypto assets in July 2021. 

In the US, Senator Ted Cruz voluntarily disclosed his bitcoin purchase, unlike Kim. The Texas Republican bought anywhere from $15,001 to $50,000 worth of the asset, according to a Senate financial disclosure.

More recently, Cruz said he was “incredibly bullish” on bitcoin and crypto more broadly. He added that he has a standing buy order every Monday.

“I own a little more than 2 bitcoin, and every Monday I own a little bit more,” Cruz said.

This comes as 2024 presidential candidates begin to share their vision for crypto with their American constituents, including how they plan to regulate the industry. 

Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeted that President Joe Biden’s 30% tax on electricity used by crypto mining is “a bad idea.” 

President Biden’s latest foray into crypto regulation came Tuesday when he tweeted that if Congress got rid of tax loopholes helping “wealthy crypto investors,” it would bring in $18 billion to the government. 

Most other candidates have yet to comment on their plans for regulating Bitcoin and the larger cryptocurrency space.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

LTIPPanalysis.png

Research

This report is a retroactive analysis of Arbitrum's Long Term Incentives Pilot Program (LTIPP). We collect relevant data at a protocol level and review bi-weekly updates to analyze recipients, their strategies, and the impact of the incentives on high level growth metrics. In particular, we want to highlight outperformers and underperformers, and glean any best practices or lessons learned for protocols distributing ARB incentives in the future. The overarching goal is to synthesize lessons learned that the DAO can reference as it begins thinking about future incentives programs–namely, the working group for incentives that is being actively discussed–especially as Timeboost introduces new conditions for trading and economic activity.

article-image

Sponsored

AI project Zerebro intersects the spheres of artificial intelligence, finance, art, music, and culture

article-image

Allmight is focused on furthering the United States’ leadership in crypto

article-image

The conditions Charles Schwab is waiting for before jumping headfirst into crypto could take shape soon

article-image

The FCA’s director of payments and digital assets shared some takeaways from chats with crypto companies and law firms

article-image

Let’s take a look at how US equities typically perform this time of year and what we might see in the coming days

article-image

Lumina introduces transparency and permissionless integration via an OP stack-based optimium, challenging traditional oracle designs