Korea IT Times celebrates its 20th anniversary with insightful columns from local and international thought leaders. Following contributions from experts from all walks of life in July, August, and September, we are pleased to present our October contributors.
- Jong-Shik Kim, Chair Professor: Brain-Computer Interface (BCI)
- Byoung Min Im, Columnist: In the Age of AI, the Best Language Mankind Can Dream of Is Hangul
- Hyoung Joong Kim, Chairman of the Korean Society of Fintech and Chair Professor of Digital Financial Management at Hoseo University: Movement to Establish a Desirable Virtual Asset Protection Foundation
- Piyush Gupta, Founder and CEO of Polytrade: RWA’s IRL: The Power of Tokenization to Disrupt Legacy Industries
- Cho, Sung Kap, Chair Professor at Anyang University: Reviewing the presentations of the global top 10 IT companies
- Miguel Buffara, Lead Financial Engineer at RACE: New Opportunities Unlocked by Tokenizing Luxury Goods for HNWIs in Asia
- Dana Cohen, Product Marketing Manager at Sony Semiconductor Israel: Optimizing Trackers with LTE-M: Connectivity Advantages Explained
- Choe Chong-dae, Columnist: Celebrating Thai Heritage and Friendship: The Sawasdee Seoul 2024
By Hyoung Joong Kim, Chair Professor
On 26 September 2024, the Financial Services Commission approved the establishment of the Digital Asset Protection Foundation, which was established by the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance (DAXA). This is the Financial Services Commission's first approval of a non-profit corporation related to virtual assets, so attention is focused on the foundation's launch.
In the future, the Foundation will autonomously transfer the user's assets from the closed exchange and return them to the user. In addition, the user's deposits will be stored in a bank, and virtual assets will be stored in a Won market exchange. The Foundation is expected to entrust the administration to the institutions.
Although some see cryptocurrencies as a means of speculation, their impact on society has been very positive. Bitcoin, which debuted in 2009, became the first cryptocurrency in the world to adopt MultiSig technology in 2012. Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology was introduced for dark coins and multiparty computation (MPC) for wallets. The greatest minds in cryptography have entered the field because it is the most realistic and challenging.
The unicorn company designation was first created in 2013, and there have been around 1,200 on the list. Eighty-three of them are virtual asset unicorns. Three more were added this year: Monad, Polyhedra Network, and Humanity Protocol. In South Korea, virtual assets are treated like 'public enemies,' while overseas, they are becoming a growth industry in no time.
As many as 9,000 people registered for the Korea Blockchain Week (KBW2024) event at the Walkerhill Hotel in September, and many global virtual asset companies and speakers flocked to Seoul. That's because Korea still has excellent growth potential in the virtual asset market.
It is good to see the DAXA rolling up its sleeves to create a crypto-protection foundation to stabilize the market. Hopefully, this will remove one of the scarlet letters on crypto. I hope the government and citizens will take a warm look at the importance of the virtual asset industry.
