National Tax Service moves to tighten custody of seized crypto assets… "Considering talks with private custodians"

South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) has been confirmed to be reviewing the use of private custody providers to strengthen the safekeeping of crypto assets it has seized.

According to industry sources on the 20th (Korea time), the NTS has been discussing improvements to its storage methods in the wake of a recent crypto theft incident, and is said to be considering outsourcing custody to a private provider as one option.

An official from the NTS task force (TF) to upgrade its crypto asset management framework said, "We are improving how we manage seized crypto assets to prevent a recurrence of incidents similar to what happened previously," adding, "Private custody is also one of the options under review."

Previously, the NTS suffered an incident in which seized crypto assets were stolen after it exposed a mnemonic code—the cryptographic key to a crypto wallet—during the distribution of a press release related to the seizure of assets from tax evaders.

However, the NTS said specific screening criteria or a timeline have not yet been finalized.