South Korea’s top regulator is rethinking crypto market structure after a stablecoin briefly broke far from its intended price. The Financial Services Commission is reviewing whether exchanges should be required to have formal market-making rules after the JPYC incident earlier this month. When the yen-backed stablecoin listed on Upbit on September 17, it opened around 12 won against a reference value near 8.8 won. Within about an hour, heavy buying and thin sell-side liquidity pushed it as high as 37.6 won, about four times its target level.
The problem was not just a sharp move. There were too few sell orders and too little depth in the book, so buyers were able to drive the price well away from fair value. Now the FSC is looking at whether exchanges need clearer liquidity rules to prevent that kind of dislocation, instead of treating JPYC as a one-off spike.