South Korea's aggressive expansion

Upbit and Bithumb, 2 of the largest Korea Cryptocurrency Exchanges (with KRW pairings) has a daily trading volume of USD 1,675,000,000 in the past 24 hours and has 2% of the daily trading volume of Bitcoin today.

Kakao, the Korean internet firm that operates the largest messaging app and Upbit is expanding by Gound X, launching a blockchain company.

Line, own by Korean internet search giant, Naver, which based in Tokyo, launched its own blockchain subsidiary "Unblock"

Investments and expansions are clearing pouring from the 2 South Korea internet firms, signalling the affirmations of the blockchain technology.

Theloop has developed the ICON Project and Foundation and have many industry partners in Korea like its Financial Investment Consortium where 25 financial investment companies and institutions make use of the service for common authentication, quick and accurate settlement without any intermediary agency through the use of Smart Contracts.

These are the full list of partnerships they have which includes large corporations of a variety of industries and universities.

Accelerator

Recently, the ICON Foundation have also kickstarted a blockchain accelerator to support companies in incorporating ICON infrastructure , funding, building the blockchain infrastructure, and marketing.

From the left: HW Lee(CEO of Unblock), JH KIm(CEO of theloop), Simon KIM(CEO of #Hashed), JH Park(CTO of Upbit), JS Han(CEO of Ground X)

Their first and most recent blockchain accelerator program has CEOs/CTOs from Line, theloop, Hashed (South Korea's largest blockchain fund and accelerator), Upbit, Ground X. The winner, STAYGE evaluates fan engagement and the first to tokenise fandom by converting something intangible, tangible in the entertainment industry. More information about STAYGE can be found here.

Implementation

Korea has been at the forefront of this technology and implementing it.

33 companies and government office officials will be using Chainsign, a blockchain contract platform, developed by theloop and Cyberdigm. It is a new 'contract platform' that uses block chaining technology to add trust to existing electronic contract systems.

Kyobo Life, one of the big South Korean insurance companies trialed and highlighted that insurance claims are now simplified to within 10 minutes with the use of blockchain technology.

Korea Custom Service (KCS) launched a pilot project using loopchain. Approximately 56% of e-commerce import items will be piloted by the end of the year. With the introduction of the block chain, the KCS anticipates that logistics and reporting costs will be greatly reduced, and the burden of work, false reporting and civil complaints will decrease. In the mid- to long-term, it is expected to increase the government export, improve the reliability of export goods, and improve data utilization by using block chains.

South Korea is certainly no doubt moving at a fast pace when it comes to adoption in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, embracing the technology, and reaping the benefits of it.

Summary

Korea is definitely at the forefront in leading the world with the implementation of blockchain and cryptocurrency. The infrastructure is expanding, Korean government acknowledging the importance of blockchain technology, and has seen rapid expansion in the tertiary education in Korea. I am sure Nasdaq and other financial institutions are eyeing on the massive potential of what this potentially multi-trillion market can bring, with Korea leading the way.

“The first uses of the blockchain will be in the less regulated markets, less efficient markets, more bespoke markets. Test it out, show that it works, demonstrate the efficiency in the Nasdaq private market or in the fund industry,” Friedman said. “It takes a village to make it work, but people are going to be highly motivated if we show that the use cases bring a lot of efficiency.” - Adena Friedman, Nasdaq CEO

Source: Cryptocurrency the ‘Right Next Step in the Space of Currency’: Nasdaq CEO

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