The number of listed cryptocurrencies has soared in the past four years, as the rapid rise of the price of Bitcoin attracts investor attention to digital assets. However, investors should be cautious as digital coins easily get listed and delisted.

Upbit, one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, launched in October 2017 with only one digital token -- Bitcoin -- but it now has 114 coins trading on the platform. Bithumb had eight digital coins in May 2017, but now it trades 143.

Coinone currently has 181 tokens while Korbit supports the trading of 30 digital coins.

Some digital coins have not survived long as crypto exchanges delist digital coins based on their internal standards such as violations of laws and technical problems.

Bithumb has unlisted 37 coins between November 2019 and now, while Upbit has removed 14.

For instance, several privacy coins, which have a high level of anonymity features, were delisted recently before a new law on cryptocurrency takes effect Thursday after the Financial Intelligence Unit of the country’s Financial Services Commission warned that privacy coins will be ordered to be delisted from domestic exchanges.

With an increasing number of listings, false disclosures that are meant to help traders‘ investment decision are creating issues. The trading of digital assets have no favorable factors such as corporate performance that investors could take into account when making an investment decision and investors often rely on public disclosures made at crypto exchanges. However, the risk of false disclosure is high because there are no legal regulations on disclosure in the cryptocurrency markets.

Last week, Upbit decided to remove GOM2 tokens from its listings. The coin’s price soared after it announced it had received 5 trillion won ($4,4 billion) in funding from London-based cryptocurrency lending firm Celsius Network. The announcement was denied by Celsius, which said in a tweet that it “did not purchase or invest in GOM2 tokens, and is not connected to this project in any way. Information claiming otherwise is false, was not approved by us, and is likely fraudulent.“

Meanwhile, Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by trading volume, was being traded at about 67 million won as of 2 pm on Sunday, according to Upbit. It has soared more than 10 times from a year ago when the price of Bitcoin lingered between 6 million won and 7 million won.

By Park Ga-young (gypark@heraldcorp.com)