When the South Korean cryptocurrencies Luna and TerraUSD collapsed in May, their failures contributed to a $300 billion loss across the crypto economy; public outcries for Do Kwon, the cryptocurrencies’ creator, to go to jail; and multiple investigations. But that, and a broader “crypto winter” dragging down prices across the industry, don’t appear to have curbed South Korea’s appetite for all things web3.
Korea Blockchain Week opened this weekend with greater than 7,000 people registered to attend and over 120 speakers on the lineup. In keeping with the event’s chief executive officer, Jeon Seon-ik, this yr’s event was certainly one of the biggest of its kind in Asia, if not the world.
One in every of the keynote speakers, Search engine optimization Sang-min, who runs the Klaytn Foundation, a distinguished South Korean blockchain company, attributed the event’s popularity to a South Korean penchant for tech.
“Despite the Luna-Terra crash, the nation is big on crypto and is certainly one of the tech centers of the world,” he said in an interview.
Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder and the chief scientist at Ethereum, the system that runs the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, also gave a keynote speech. He emphasized the necessity to make crypto transactions cheaper for a wider range of users and promoting the advantages of a decentralized economic system.
Cryptocurrency first surged in South Korea in 2017 after the country’s largest conglomerate, Samsung, announced that it will find a company use for Ethereum. Samsung SDS was the primary Korean enterprise to affix the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which began in San Francisco that yr to facilitate business transactions.
Since then, South Korea’s crypto market has grown to be certainly one of the biggest on the earth. The country’s crypto assets grew to 55 trillion won at the top of last yr, price about $46 billion on the time, with greater than 15 million registered users of trading platforms, based on the country’s Financial Services Commission. Just a few years ago, the South Korean government adopted a more wary stance on cryptocurrencies, and even considered banning them. More recently, though, the federal government has moved to control the industry.
Mr. Search engine optimization believes that the federal government’s shift in approach is an acknowledgment of the industry’s potential. “The metaverse and web3 have potential to be greater than a method of investment, create recent jobs and solve real-world problems,” he said.
