South Korea is known to be a high-tech hub that aside from hosting a number of consumer electronics and tech giants also happens to be a popular esports and global innovation center. That said, it came as little of a surprise when a report compiled by Cindicator, a platform that promotes intelligent investing, revealed that the country will have a major role to play in as far as mainstream adoption of crypto is concerned.
Basing their study on existing data from exchange volumes, recent economic history, trends and regulations, Cindicator was able to draw some very interesting conclusions. The evidence suggests that South Korea which is one of the world’s top 15 economies and has a population of about 50 million people is going to play a critical role in driving the cryptocurrency agenda forward. The main factors supporting this claim include such things as a high level of tech adoption as well as the country’s regulatory and tax frameworks.
The Population Is the Focus
While South Korea rarely makes the cut when crypto-friendly countries are being listed, the population’s attitude towards the crypto industry does not align with the laws and regulations of the country in this regard – South Koreans have quite the appetite when it comes revolutionary technologies such as digital currencies. In fact, the South Korean population accounts for close to 30 percent of the total global cryptocurrency trading volume.
Moreover, it has also be found that close to 30 percent of all the salaried people in South Korea own and trade in at least one type of digital currency. While the country’s economic history and its very impressive growth factor may have contributed to these findings, it is still very impressive that such a small country has been able to develop such a vibrant cryptocurrency exchange scene.
The Infrastructure
Bithumb, the biggest Korean exchange is responsible for most of the great things happening in South Korea’s highly developed crypto exchange scene. In fact, other than the fact that it has made the region one of the top monitored regions on Cindicator’s Cryptometer service, it has also been at the top spot over the past month in as far as trading volume in USD is concerned. The other exchanges, namely Upbit, Korbit, and Coinone, have also been doing quite well.
With such a vibrant market, the next logical and naturally inevitable development will be the introduction of regulatory measures. As it stands, crypto regulation in the country is starting to take shape – most of the ones that were already in place were in most part initial reactions that were meant to address rampant ecosystem problems such hacks and scam ICOs. The country’s government recently allocated an equivalent of $888 million for blockchain development in 2019 as part of a $4.4 billion package that is intended to facilitate economic growth through innovation.
This is proof that the country is changing its stance towards the industry by creating a climate that favors the growth of blockchain technology which is perhaps the first step towards the legitimization and mainstream adoption of digital currencies.
