When South Korean cryptocurrencies Luna and TerraUSD collapsed in May, their failures contributed to a $300 billion loss in the crypto economy; public outcry for Do Kwon, the creator of the cryptocurrencies, to go to jail; and multiple studies. But that, and a broader “crypto winter” dragging down prices across the industry, doesn’t seem to have curbed South Korea’s appetite for all things internet3.
Korea Blockchain Week opened this weekend with more than 7,000 people registered and more than 120 speakers in the lineup. According to the event’s chief executive officer, Jeon Seon-ik, this year’s event was one of the largest of its kind in Asia, if not the world.
One of the keynote speakers, Seo Sang-min, who runs the Klaytn Foundation, a prominent South Korean blockchain company, attributed the event’s popularity to a South Korean penchant for technology.
“Despite the Luna-Terra crash, the country is big on crypto and is one of the tech centers of the world,” he said in an interview.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and chief scientist at Ethereum, the system that operates the second largest cryptocurrency in the world after Bitcoin, also gave a keynote address. He stressed the need to make crypto transactions more affordable for a wider range of users and to promote the benefits of a decentralized financial system.
Cryptocurrency rose for the first time in South Korea in 2017 after the country’s largest conglomerate, Samsung, announced it would find a business use for Ethereum. Samsung SDS was the first Korean company to join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which started in San Francisco that year to facilitate business transactions.
Since then, South Korea’s crypto market has grown to become one of the largest in the world. The country’s crypto assets grew to 55 trillion won at the end of last year, worth about $46 billion at the time, with more than 15 million registered trading platform users, according to the country’s Financial Services Commission. A few years ago, the South Korean government took a more cautious stance on cryptocurrencies and even considered banning them. More recently, however, the government has taken steps to regulate the industry.
Mr. Seo believes that the change in government approach is a recognition of the industry’s potential. “The metaverse and web3 have the potential to be more than a means of investing, creating new jobs and solving real-world problems,” he said.
