So yesterday it finally happened: South Korea became dominant in two different cryptocurrencies that I’m involved with: Dash and Steem.

Yesterday morning as I was glancing over my Twitter feed, I ran into an official @dashpay tweet announcing there was more trading in KRW (South Korean Won) on the Korean Bithumb exchange than any other exchange today:

Here's a look at the top Dash trading volume:

As you can see, the Bithumb exchange did over $10 million worth of trading with the South Korean Won. This is impressive. After getting my Twitter fix, I headed over to Steemit.com to catch up on the latest trending articles. And bam!

There it was: Asia has just surpassed the Americas as far as Steemit web traffic.

The Asian flippening has just picked up some serious Steem. A popular Steemian, @gavvet, reported this brand-new development in his post: https://steemit.com/stats/@gavvet/make-way-for-the-new-king-asia-led-by-seoul-and-south-korea

Here are the graphs that show the exponential user growth from Asian Steemians and how they just surpassed the Americas:

And it’s interesting to note that Steemit’s new city capital is Seoul, Korea, with over 9% of total users coming from there:

This flippening seems to have happened in the last few months, and it is worthy of looking into the reasons why. After searching a bit online for information, it appears that the Korean government is particularly friendly towards Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency projects. This friendly attitude is probably the main cause of the recent exponential growth in cryptocurrency volumes in Korea and fintech startup investment.

The thing that other governments, like the US, don’t fully grasp is that tech, blockchain and cryptocurrencies are all inter-connected and part of a bigger story of shifting technology systems.

This shift is manifesting itself in the way the internet itself functions. Most people in law don’t have the time to undergo such a massive amount of research and therefore lack the necessary knowledge to apply regulations. They don’t know what they are dealing with because they don’t see the patterns and the future of money and digital life. It is a big movement of interconnected technological parts, not isolated cogs to try and restrain. Doing so will just result in more people avoiding traveling to the United States. This could definitely further harm economic growth in the United States as digital currency is undergoing some serious expansion in certain parts of the world.

The future of money is linked to cryptocurrencies and digital life and Korea knows it. Bitcoin.com reports that:

The region has also been blossoming with startups dedicated to bitcoin remittance and financial tech advancement. The South Korean government has been very friendly towards digital currencies, and the country is steadily becoming a technology hub. Just recently the government lowered the equity capital requirement for bitcoin companies working with remittances. The new statutes will begin on June 18 with a reduction of required capital to 1 billion KRW in contrast to the prior requirement of 2 billion KRW.

Additionally, researchers from the South Korean central bank recently released a report that detailed that virtual currencies like bitcoin can “coexist with fiat.” -Bitcoin.com

Hello, Korea and thank you!
고맙습니다

Cheers,
Stellabelle

btw, I will pay someone 10 Steem to translate this article into Korean. #steemgig. Please comment below if you are interested in translating it. Update: Steemgig has been filled! Thanks for the offers.