IOV’s Asian Journey part 2: What We Learned in South Korea and Japan
Following a visit to Singapore last week, IOV went to South Korea and Japan. What we saw there made us excited for the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain generally, and IOV’s role within the region.
South Korea was in many ways the epicenter of the cryptocurrency boom last year, giving birth to the term ¨Kimchi Premium¨. The South Korean market commands one of the largest´ demographics interested in cryptocurrencies and related activities, ranking no.3 in the world. For example, 30% of Korean workers have purchased cryptocurrencies.
Over an intensive two and a half days, IOV had the opportunity to meet with a number of key players in South Korea’s blockchain world from the academic, corporate, accelerator, investor and media circles.
Mr. Jinyoung Choi, the Chairman of WBEA-World Blockchain Economy Alliance, mentioned that the blockchain industry in South Korea is set to see improvements next year, starting with Jeju Island, a regulation-free zone where the Korean government is eager to see new technologies develop, including the blockchain industry. Prof. IK Song, lecturer on blockchain and investment at Korea University, shared the view that a gap between blockchain technology and institutions/corporations exists. IOV’s interoperable technology, universal wallet, and protocol have an opportunity to fill this gap by helping regular people access blockchains.
IOV also heard from those in the e-commerce and blockchain industries. IOV’s human-readable value address got their attention, which led to proposing a proof-of-concept to show to their clients.
Another highlight of our visit to South Korea was an encounter with Dreamplus, an open innovation hub and the center of blockchain for Hanwha group, one of the top 10 business enterprises in South Korea. Hanwha is a leader in the application of blockchain technology to their financial business and as a result is a major supporter of the blockchain industry. Their mission is to develop a security tokenization platform, Asia Blockchain Ecosystem, and to provide online learning with content from UC Berkeley.
It was very heartening to see we had a common mindset with Hanwha regarding the aim of connecting people with blockchains and fostering a global ecosystem. In general IOV’s first foray into the South Korean market could be considered a great success.
After our fruitful trip to South Korea, IOV headed over to Japan for the TeamZ Blockchain Summit.
Japan has long been at the forefront of the crypto industry, however, in the aftermath of the Coincheck hack, regulators have been tightening the rules so that now it is almost impossible to list tokens on the various exchanges. This resulted in a lot of interest in IOV’s atomic swap solution. Atomic swaps allow the exchange of tokens without the involvement of third party. This gives tokens immediate visibility and liquidity in the wider ecosystem.
Another highlight from this event was that unlike European blockchains, which tend to focus on finance, supply chains, and the energy sector, the Asian market is more oriented towards the entertainment industry, including gaming, gambling, as well as virtual and augmented reality.
Connecting VR/AR with blockchain is a hot topic in Asia that we were pleasantly surprised to encounter. In this part of the industry, IOV learned that there is a strong demand for personalizing crypto names and we discovered that many projects wanted to collaborate with us.
IOV’s product is not only for B2B but also for B2C blockchains. In terms of user experience, IOV’s naming solution, which generates human-readable addresses like email or web addresses underpinning the internet, caught the eyes of multiple companies in Tokyo. Our visit to Japan proved that there is a huge demand for this kind of solution.
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