Altcoins unfamiliar even to seasoned retail investors — including DAD, Volta and DSC Chain — have turned up in large numbers in South Korean officials’ asset disclosures. The tokens once traded on domestic crypto exchanges but were delisted after a series of controversies and security incidents, leaving them all but impossible to sell today.
An analysis of asset filings released on the 29th by the Government Public Officials’ Ethics Committee found that nine of 110 non-elected public officials reported holding cryptocurrency in their own names. Together they disclosed 22 different crypto assets.
Their holdings included top-tier assets by market value such as bitcoin and ether, but also thinly traded altcoins that are now hard to find on domestic exchanges. Dong Seung-chul, former deputy secretary general of the National Unification Advisory Council secretariat, reported 160 units of Momentum. Lee Jin-kook, a commissioner at the Board of Audit and Inspection, disclosed holdings of 71,441.07006797 units of MiL.k.
One filer reported more than 10 different altcoins. Sung Hee-yeop, former vice mayor for future innovation of Busan, disclosed 16 tokens in total: DAD, DSC Chain, Volta, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Cash, Atube, APENFT, WEMIX, Ethereum PoW, Kaia, KVI, Tether, Tron, Polestar Coin and Flow.
Many of those tokens traded actively in South Korea during the altcoin boom before exchanges dropped them amid mounting controversies. DAD, DSC Chain and Atube are so-called kimchi coins, tokens whose trading volume came almost entirely from domestic investors. Support for many of them ended after allegations of price manipulation, hacking and other security breaches, and the suspension of the underlying projects. Eight of the tokens Sung reported are now delisted from every exchange in South Korea.
The presence of so many little-known altcoins has drawn attention to how they were acquired. The combined current value of all 16 tokens Sung reported comes to about 6,000 won. Many of the holdings are fractions too small to trade normally — 0.000051 units of DAD, 0.0000828 units of Volta and 0.0000974 units of Bitcoin Gold. In the section on reasons for changes in assets, Sung wrote that the holdings were “residual amounts with no transactions and no way to sell.”
An industry official said small amounts of a token can remain in an account even when a holder tries to sell an entire position, because of minimum order sizes and trading fees. If that token is later delisted, the official said, there is no way to dispose of the remainder and it stays in the account indefinitely.