탈중앙화금융(Decentralized Finance: DeFi)의 진전과 불공정거래의 규제 방향

Recently, ‘decentralized finance’(DeFi) is rapidly developing in the crypto-asset markets. DeFi refers to a general term for decentralized applications (Dapps) providing financial services on blockchain networks using smart contract, including deposit and lending, trading, investments, insurance, and asset management. The DeFi services typically operate without centralized intermediaries, and use open protocols. The size of DeFi is rapidly growing globally and domestically. However, since the regulatory regime for DeFi has not been yet clearly established, and the regulators in each country have not yet announced a detailed plan to regulate or supervise DeFi markets, many investors are exposed to risks of losses partly due to DeFi’s operating firms’ misconduct or illegal activities or to unfair trading of crypto-assets. Among those risks, we should note the necessity of regulating unfair trading activities, including market manipulation or insider trading using undisclosed significant information in decentralized exchanges. In order to prevent such investors’ risks of losses, this article argues that a new general law governing crypto-asset trading, including regulations on issuance of crypto-assets and relevant service providers, should be enacted as soon as possible, and further this new law should contain provisions regulating unfair trading activities of crypto-assets on decentralized exchanges, including market manipulation and insider trading, referring to the relevant provisions of the Korean Capital Market Act, Japan’s Financial Instrument Transaction Act under which a regulatory regime for the unfair trading regulation has been set up, and the European Union’s a “Proposal for Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets” (MiCA) in September 2020, containing provisions on market manipulation regulations and prohibition of insider dealing.