South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service is getting serious: it plans to finalize standard business guidelines by the end of the year, restricting small-loan lenders from offering general-purpose personal credit loans to active-duty service members. The numbers speak for themselves: loans to active-duty service members from the top 30 lenders rose from 350 million won at the end of 2022 to 24.2 billion won at the end of 2025—nearly 70 times higher in just over three years. Regulators have cited some of the funds going toward cryptocurrency and online gambling as one cause of excessive debt, but that is the regulator’s assessment, not a definitive conclusion. For crypto markets, this affects a borrowing channel for active-duty service members in South Korea, not the liquidity of the entire market. $BTC still comes down to the broader funding picture. My approach is to first see whether volume and price trends can hold; I wouldn’t rush to chase a move based on a single news item.