The story behind Dunamu: KV’s 1st unofficial unicorn now officially becomes a decacorn & more

There is this one early portfolio company that is often talked about among us, and around unexpected corners of Seoul and Korea, that has gone unnoticed up till now. And that name is Dunamu. But those in know will nod their head if they also hear “Upbit”. Dunamu is the parent company of Upbit, the flagpole crypto exchange of Korea, and it is doing marvelous.

So wait, how did this come about? We now finally get to tell our version of the story today.

Few days ago The Korea Times published an article on the secondary deal at $10B by Altos Ventures (the unicorn maker of Korea that backed the majority of Korean unicorns to date) and others. This means that Atinum Investment, one of the existing investors into Dunamu, decided to sell shares to said new investors so the latest “market valuation” went tenfold from the previous secondary round. And based on what the shares are trading on the private securities exchanges here in Korea, it is at around $15B.

Perspective: 2013, Dunamu was less than a million. In 2016 it was dozens of millions. And in 2017, just over a hundred.

And naturally, many of those out there have not heard of Dunamu until the crypto boom in Korea happened somewhere around 2017~2018, except for the few paying attention. And for Kakao Ventures, Dunamu was a coveted, proud, exemplary dev-centric portfolio that K Cube Ventures (our precursor, see other article for details on the history) backed in 2013. There was no crypto angle back then, but our love towards their credentials as stayed the same, if not much more amplified after we first-hand witnessed what they had to go through over the years.

In 2013 when most of the current KV folks wasn’t around Dunamu was a meager team of very few engineers but with laser-focus on iterate-till-you-succeed, pivoted after their botched first business idea, and struck a deal with Kakao as a tiny startup to develop Kakao’s MTS system called “StockPlus (증권플러스)” which was also called “KakaoStock” at one point, for them.

Mr. Chi Hyung Song, now the chairman of, was a crazy, devoted, hands-on but a soft-spoken developer-turned-leader that churned out app updates faster than anyone K Cube has seen up to that point, and was able to bring Dunamu up to a comfortable, but nowhere near wall wrecking status. Then came crypto.

All Dunamu had to do (a gross oversimplification of course) is to transfer knowledge and the components they learned from building out an MTS with one of the best UIs Korea was offering at the time, and bake crypto in. Thus Upbit was able to ride the wave, and rise to the status of 80% market share. (Some claim it’s near 90% as of today.)

The 1st exchange ever to hit the road was Korbit, then followed the likes of Coinone and Bithumb, along with plethora of other minor league exchanges. Binance also eventually stuck around for a while until they had to bow out due to the latest development in the regulatory landscape that ensured the country now has a blanket, uniform guideline and also expectations that the crypto exchanges have to meet in order to qualify as a whitelist exchange business. And, of course, as Upbit has been always been on top of the game by far from its competition, her application for complete enrollment into the new regulatory framework was way ahead of the others as well. Talk about absolute dominance. (For now of course.)

But like the Sound of Music tune, “Sixteen going on Seventeen”, Dunamu’s continuing to show immense growth not unlike Coinbase’s. As told by NYT the company behind symbol COIN is performing at about 2x of what Upbit is putting on for 2021, at more than $3B in revenue. That’s not half bad for Upbit in our opinion, given the geographical and population disadvantage.

Tidbits on the fundraising history of Dunamu — the last known priced equity round (primary, not secondary) was in 2017 at a modest valuation. Then the cash guzzled in from Upbit, Dunamu no longer needed to turn to external funding for sustenance, and ever since then there were no more proper mark up that could determine the status, even though all the insiders (including some other local VCs) knew deep down inside that Dunamu was going to break the sound barrier, and at the least unicorn status way early.

And, to be fair to outside investors, especially from outside of Korea, there was so little of coverage or information that would let them feel comfortable to even review any aspect of Dunamu’s business (which now not only includes the crypto exchange or the public stock exchange but also various other new efforts, dwarfed by Upbit for now) so there was no budging anywhere.

Also, up until 2020, there were mixed sentiments here in Korea on whether the government would get off the fence and fully embrace crypto (exchanges) at all by going through the length to formally recognize crypto as a virtual asset class and categorize the business so that the groundwork to start implementing supervisory & tax-related policies around it.

All these reasons let us, made us, sit and wait until that tipping point, and just watch the landslide win by Dunamu to secure Upbit’s #1 position in the market. Our belief that the smart, savvy, and trustworthy management leadership and the brand they have built would eventually beat the uncertainty and come out atop.

As current investors, Kakao Ventures continues to believe in Dunamu’s brighter future as the earliest backer, and will look forward to seeing them take it to untested grounds. And who knows — at this pace Dunamu may even have a shot at the largest private company (30x 🦄? 50x?) with the best returns in the Korean VC history ever. Can only go up from here!