On January 11, 2018, Minister of Justice Park announced a ban on cryptocurrency transactions and a closing the exchange through the enactment of a special law on the grounds that the term was inaccurate and that “virtual asset transactions are in fact similar to gambling.” However, despite this announcement, the price of Bitcoin surpassed 20 million South Korean won (“KRW”) on the Korean exchange in November 2020, boasting its ransom. In this regard, people in this industry and cryptocurrency experts predicted that “Bitcoin will be an alternative to gold and stocks,” and “the price of a single Bitcoin can exceed 200 million KRW by 2023.”

“No Daji” is a metaphor for a job that can easily make a lot of profit. One of the etymologies of “No Daji” is that, during the Joseon Dynasty in Korea, the American gold mining supervisor said, “No touch!” when Korean workers touched gold or acted suspiciously. Therefore, for Korean workers who did not speak English, “No Touch!” was understood as a word referring to something that sprouts gold, and “No Daji,” which is pronounced in Korean, became a word for a market where money sprouts easily. As if to ridicule some people’s predictions that the cryptocurrency market will end in 2018, the cryptocurrency market is growing in size around the world, and people in this industry and cryptocurrency experts predict that cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology will become the next economic growth engine and “No Daji.”

In the midst of these people’s continuous interest and increasing market transactions, the Korean government is planning and proceeding with regulations through the enactment of related laws. In
this regard, this Article will briefly look at the Amendment to the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information (the Amendment to the Act is referred to as the “Amendment”) in order to answer following question: Would the virtual asset market become “No Daji” or “No Touch!”?

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