South Korea's 5 Major Crypto Exchanges Unify Balance Reconciliation Cycles to Under 5 Minutes

South Korea's five major won-market digital asset exchanges have all shortened their balance reconciliation cycles—the process of cross-checking actual held assets against internal ledgers—to under five minutes. The move follows the financial authorities' mandate for real-time balance reconciliation systems after the Bitcoin (BTC) overpayment incident at Bithumb in February.

According to data submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service to the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Kang Jun-hyun on October 2, all five exchanges—Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, DigitalX (formerly Korbit), and Gopax—now reconcile their actual digital asset holdings against internal ledger quantities at intervals of five minutes or less.

Data integrity verification is the process of checking whether the quantity of virtual assets actually held by an exchange matches the quantity recorded in its internal database. A mismatch suggests the possibility of abnormal transactions.

The timing of adoption varies by exchange. Bithumb launched a real-time reconciliation system running at two-minute intervals in May, following the overpayment incident. Coinone adopted a five-minute automated reconciliation system on June 1, DigitalX on March 9, and Gopax on August 26. Upbit has operated five-minute reconciliation cycles since November 2022.