These are seven major crypto stories checked through 5 p.m. Korea time (08:00 UTC) on October 25, 2026. They were selected from reports and official notices published October 23–25 for their impact on investors in Korea and on people who run wallets or nodes. Prices, liquidations and ETF flows refer to the time stated by each source.
In South Korea, the biggest story was the possibility that the crypto income tax will be delayed again. The presidential office’s official position, however, is still that the matter is under review, so the delay should not be treated as settled. If you use the Electrum wallet, start by checking for the 4.8.3 update.
On this page
Seven stories at a glance
| Area | Story | Current status |
|---|---|---|
| Tax | Korea leans toward delaying its crypto tax again | “Under review”; current start date is January 1, 2027 |
| Markets | Bitcoin briefly falls to about $79,280 | Low $80,000s at 5 p.m. Korea time on October 25 |
| Exploit | Initia halts its chain and rollups | No restart date; Upbit has suspended INIT transfers |
| Wallets | Electrum 4.8.3 security update | Versions below 4.8.3 are affected |
| Courts | Argentine judge dismisses the LIBRA case | Investors may still be able to appeal |
| Tokenized stocks | 22 issuers object to OKXICE trading | Their stocks will not trade on that venue |
| Mining | 15 companies commit to Tether’s MDK | Stable 1.0 targeted by the end of 2026 |
1. Korea’s crypto tax: the presidential office leans toward a delay, with no decision yet
Several Korean outlets, including the Seoul Economic Daily and the Electronic Times, reported on October 25 that Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential office, is leaning toward postponing a tax on crypto income that is due to take effect on January 1, 2027. According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun (in Korean), a presidential official said the tax “will proceed in the direction of a postponement” in consultations between the government and the ruling party. In a notice to reporters, however, the office said the matter “is under review and nothing has been decided.”
Under the current Income Tax Act, annual income from transferring or lending virtual assets is taxed at 22% (20% income tax plus 2% local income tax) after a basic deduction of KRW 2.5 million. The tax was enacted in 2020 and has been postponed three times, so a confirmed delay would be the fourth.
Supporters of a delay point to a gap in cross-border reporting. Under the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), tax authorities exchange crypto transaction data with each other; the exchanges begin in 2027, but the United States is not scheduled to join until 2029. If income earned on US exchanges is hard to track, the tax could fall mainly on users of Korean exchanges.
The Digital Times (in Korean) reported that 14 ruling-bloc lawmakers, including Democratic Party lawmaker Park Min-gyu, have co-sponsored a bill to move the start date to 2029, and that the opposition People Power Party officially supports a delay. The Kyunghyang Shinmun also reported concerns that repeated delays undermine the consistency and fairness of tax policy. The start date would change only after party-government consultations following the parliamentary audit and an amendment during the National Assembly’s November review of tax bills.
2. Bitcoin: a weekend dip into the $79,000s, long liquidations and ETF outflows
Bitcoin fell below $80,000 on the morning of October 24 in New York, around midnight Korea time. CoinDesk linked the drop to a Wall Street Journal report that the US was quickly evacuating personnel from embassies and military bases across the Middle East over the threat of Iranian attacks. According to The Block, bitcoin fell to about $79,280 around 11:20 a.m. ET before recovering to $80,138 by 1 p.m. ET (2 a.m. on October 25 in Korea).
Forced liquidations of leveraged long positions deepened the move. CoinGlass data cited by The Block showed $436.44 million in liquidations in the four hours to 1 p.m. ET, $404.15 million of them longs. A TokenPost tally (in Korean) of the top 20 coins put liquidations over the 24 hours to 3:55 p.m. Korea time on October 25 at $452.86 million, with longs accounting for 86.36%.
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a second straight day of net outflows. Citing SoSoValue data, Bloomingbit reported net outflows of $635.49 million on October 22 and $137.94 million on October 23, for a two-day total of $773.43 million. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $110.34 million of the October 23 outflow.
Prices at about 5 p.m. Korea time on October 25 are shown below. USD prices and 24-hour changes come from the CoinGecko API, and KRW prices from the Upbit ticker API, both queried at 16:57 Korea time.
| Coin | USD (24h change) | Upbit (KRW) |
|---|---|---|
| BTC | $80,615 (−0.06%) | 108,303,000 |
| ETH | $2,346.21 (−1.14%) | 3,151,000 |
| XRP | $1.30 (+1.31%) | 1,746 |
| SOL | $101.59 (−0.25%) | 136,500 |
3. Initia: the chain stays halted and Upbit suspends INIT transfers
Initia, a layer-1 blockchain, halted its main chain and the rollups that run on top of it at 11:41 a.m. ET on October 23 (00:41 on October 24 in Korea). According to PANews, which relayed Initia’s October 24 update on X, the attacker used a script-caching flaw in MoveVM to bypass security checks and credit itself with unbacked WETH, iUSD and USDC balances. MoveVM is the virtual machine that runs smart contracts written in the Move language. Initia said no INIT was minted and its total supply was unaffected.
Before the halt, about $2.7 million in assets left the network through LayerZero and through Noble and CCTP, and were later swapped into 1,135.52 ETH. Initia said it expects to complete a fix and an audit within days and will publish a full post-mortem, but it has not announced a restart date.
Upbit suspended INIT deposits and withdrawals at 00:57 Korea time on October 24 and issued a trading caution at 01:15; both notices are in Korean. As of 5 p.m. Korea time on October 25, the suspension notice had not announced a resumption. Upbit said deposit refunds are paused during the suspension and withdrawal address registration may be as well. INIT holders should check Initia’s official channels and Upbit’s notices for the restart schedule.
4. Electrum 4.8.3: blocking a malicious-server transaction swap
The Bitcoin wallet Electrum released version 4.8.3 as a security update on October 23 and published a high-severity security advisory, GHSA-6jp4-8v48-cc5v, on October 24. Versions below 4.8.3 are affected.
Light clients such as Electrum rely on the server they connect to for unconfirmed transactions that are not yet in a block. A malicious server can withhold a transaction the user has just sent and show, in its place, an invalid transaction that pays the attacker’s address. If that transaction appears stuck and the user raises its fee with RBF (Replace-By-Fee, which rebroadcasts a transaction with a higher fee), the wallet signs a valid transaction that pays the attacker.
The advisory says some servers are performing this attack in the wild. Of two user reports, one user bumped the fee and lost money, and the attacker’s address had been generated to match the last four characters of the legitimate address. Version 4.8.3 verifies the signatures of the wallet’s own inputs before adding an unconfirmed transaction to its history. The advisory notes that incoming transactions are still not validated.
Download the update from electrum.org and verify its GPG signature. Until you upgrade, check the full destination address and the amount every time you sign, including when you bump a fee. Clients that connect only to servers they trust, such as servers they run themselves, are not affected.
5. Argentina’s LIBRA case: dismissal for President Milei and 10 others
Argentine federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi on October 23 (local time) dismissed the criminal case over the LIBRA memecoin against 11 people, including President Javier Milei; his sister Karina Milei, the presidency’s secretary general; and Hayden Davis, a US businessman who described himself as an adviser to the token’s launch. CoinDesk reported that the judge found the president’s promotional post and the token’s later collapse insufficient to establish fraud without evidence of a specific deception.
Milei promoted the Solana-based LIBRA on X on February 14, 2025, and the token lost more than 90% of its value soon after its surge. The presidential office welcomed the ruling in an official statement (in Spanish). Investors who were removed as plaintiffs have challenged that removal before the Federal Criminal Cassation Court, however, and if they are reinstated they could appeal the dismissal.
6. Tokenized stocks: 22 issuers object to trading on OKXICE
OKXICE, a 50-50 joint venture between NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and OKX, named 22 issuers that have objected to trading of their shares in a public notice updated on October 23 (PDF). Cisco, Wells Fargo, Arm, Moderna, Intuit and Marvell were the latest additions; Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s were among the earlier objectors.
Relying on the SEC’s conditional exemption for tokenized securities venues (TSVs), OKXICE is preparing a market in which tokenized stocks trade against payment stablecoins in Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on the X Layer blockchain. According to CoinDesk, a venue must notify issuers in advance and give them 30 days to object.
An objection keeps a stock off this venue; it does not mean the issuer opposes every form of tokenization. Wells Fargo and Arm were not among the 62 companies originally proposed, so not all 22 objections are departures from the initial list.
7. Tether’s MDK: 15 mining companies commit to a shared integration layer
In an announcement on October 24, Tether said 15 mining operators, ASIC manufacturers and pools, including Bitmain, Canaan, MicroBT, Bitdeer, F2Pool, Foundry Digital and Luxor, will build and maintain integrations for its open-source Mining Development Kit (MDK). Each participant will build an MDK Worker that translates its hardware, pool or system interface into MDK’s common format.
Putting one layer over vendor-specific interfaces reduces the need to rebuild monitoring tools and AI operations agents for each type of equipment. Tether said its QVAC mining agent already runs on MDK and that it aims to ship the first stable 1.0 release by the end of 2026. The announcement is a commitment to build integrations; it includes no efficiency or cost-saving figures.
Dates to watch
Dates and times are in Korea time.
- October 27, 02:42: the original Glamsterdam activation time on Ethereum’s Hoodi testnet. It has been postponed, and no new date is set.
- October 29, 03:00: the US FOMC statement on the October 27–28 (US time) meeting.
- After the National Assembly audit: party-government talks decide whether Korea’s crypto tax delay is confirmed, followed by the November review of tax bills.
- Date not announced: the Initia restart, its post-mortem and Upbit’s notice on resuming INIT transfers.
The Ethereum Foundation announced on October 22 that Glamsterdam on the Hoodi testnet is postponed, to allow further investigation of how EIP-8037, which changes gas accounting, interacts with existing mainnet smart contracts. Hoodi node and validator operators need execution and consensus clients that reflect the postponement; the foundation said mainnet users and ETH holders do not need to take any action.
The Federal Reserve’s FOMC calendar lists the October meeting for October 27–28. The statement is usually released at 2 p.m. ET on the final day, which is 3 a.m. on October 29 in Korea.
Sources and further material
- Korea’s crypto tax (in Korean): Kyunghyang Shinmun: presidential office weighs another delay · Digital Times: delay under review · Financial News: leaning toward a delay · Seoul Economic Daily: delay concluded · Electronic Times: another delay likely
- Bitcoin prices, liquidations and ETF flows: CoinDesk: bitcoin slides below $80,000 (October 24) · The Block: $404 million in long liquidations (October 24) · TokenPost: 24-hour liquidation tally (October 25, in Korean) · Bloomingbit: second day of spot ETF outflows (October 24)
- Initia: Upbit INIT suspension notice (in Korean) · Upbit INIT caution notice (in Korean) · PANews: Initia attack details (October 24) · Unchained: no restart date (October 23)
- Electrum: Security advisory GHSA-6jp4-8v48-cc5v · Electrum release notes
- LIBRA: CoinDesk: LIBRA case dismissed (October 24) · Argentine presidency statement No. 171 (October 23, in Spanish)
- Tokenized stocks: OKXICE TSV public notice (October 23, PDF) · CoinDesk: 22 objecting issuers (October 24)
- Tether MDK: Tether announcement (October 24)
- Dates: Ethereum Foundation: Glamsterdam on Hoodi postponed (October 22) · Federal Reserve FOMC calendar
- Price queries: CoinGecko Simple Price API documentation · Upbit ticker API documentation (in Korean)
Related reading
US spot Bitcoin ETFs lose $635 million in one session
Bitcoin falls below $81,500 as the technology-stock selloff spreads
Sources checked: October 25, 2026, 5 p.m. Korea time. Prices, notices and policy decisions may change after that time, and this article is not investment advice. The featured image is an illustrative photo of several cryptocurrency-themed coins; it does not show any event or exchange covered in this article.
