Maybe it’s the language barrier, or the walls authorities have set up to prevent money from leaving the country. But whatever it is, Sou
Maybe it’s the language barrier, or the walls authorities have set up to prevent money from leaving the country. But whatever it is, South Korea has built its own unique corner of the cryptoverse that’s unlike anywhere else on the planet.
Doo Wan Nam, a MakerDAO delegate who co-founded the research and advisory firm StableNode, laughs as he describes how crazy the intense speculation and crypto gambling can get in South Korea. He says it’s a country where the price of stablecoins like Dai or USD Coin can sometimes trade sky-high because if the price starts to rise a little above the $1 peg for some reason, speculators will jump in on the momentum trade.
“They sometimes trade for $20 because they don’t know it’s a stablecoin,” he explains. “They go, ‘You know, it was trading at $10, I bought it because it was pumping… I don’t know, I didn’t read, I just bought.’”
“So, I think that kind of tells you whether people knew what Terra was.”
The spectacular $60-billion implosion of the Terra ecosystem, headed up by the charismatic but ultimately deluded Korean developer Do Kwon, casts a pall over the entire ecosystem.
Terra is also instructive about some of the unique characteristics of the crypto culture in Korea, which places less emphasis on decentralization and puts more trust in project leaders like Kwon.
Crypto is huge in this country obsessed with the latest and greatest technology. The capital city Seoul is a futuristic metropolis with massive high-res screens and blistering fast internet everywhere. One in three people in the country owns cryptocurrency, and the government has unveiled an ambitious plan to transform it into the fifth-most metaverse-friendly country in the world.
South Korea technology
While English is taught in schools, few speak the language at a conversational level. This is true of many countries of course but helps explain why many Koreans aren’t plugged into the same information sources as crypto fans in the United States. Forget western social media and tech giants such as Reddit, Google, Twitter and Facebook — Google Maps barely works in the country and good luck getting an Uber.
Instead, South Koreans access the internet, chat, search, order food and call for rides using local giants Kakao and Naver.
“More than 90% of Koreans are using (social media app) KakaoTalk every day,” explains Sangmin Seo, who prefers to go by Sam. He’s the representative director of the Klatyn Foundation, Kakao’s blockchain and metaverse offshoot. “Naver is the most dominant search engine in South Korea. Google’s share is about 10%–20% and 70%–80% of the market share for search engines is Naver.”
Founded in 2011, Kakao is now the 15th-largest company in a country that’s dominated by around 40 mega-corporations. Samsung, LG, Hyundai and SK together account for half the local stock market’s value, while Samsung produces one-fifth of the country’s exports alone.
Zerocap analyst Nathan Lenga has researched the South Korean ecosystem in detail and explains there’s a whole other crypto world bubbling in the country. He cites blockchain-based video game and Roblox competitor Zepetto.
“People haven’t really heard about it, but it has 20 million users (a month), which is mindblowing,” he says.
“There’s this whole other side of crypto that we just don’t hear about that’s based on Asian culture. And that’s all originating in South Korea, and that’s why they’re such adopters — because they have their own versions.”
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2017: South Korean crypto news
Seonik Jeon, CEO of Financial News and founder of Factblock, says that prior to 2017, the only time South Korea made international news was when North Korea was firing missiles.
“However, as the blockchain market began in Korea, around 2017 and 2018, the amount of searching for blockchain and Korea together increased significantly,” he explains.
Observers were fascinated by the speculative cryptomania that saw South Korea become the world’s third-largest crypto market in 2017. Bitcoin sometimes traded up to 20% higher in the country (also known as the famous “Kimchi premium”) due to capital controls introduced after the 2007–2008 global financial crisis to…
cointelegraph.com