Crypto winter will give way to new era, Dunamu chairman forecasts

Finance

Published: 22 Sep. 2022, 16:52 Updated: 22 Sep. 2022, 19:35

Crypto winter will give way to new era, Dunamu chairman forecasts

Dunamu CEO Lee Sirgoo speakes to reporters at a press conference held at the Upbit Developer Conference in Busan on Thursday. [DUNAMU]

Busan — The next milestone for Dunamu, operator of Upbit, will be an NFT project with HYBE.

"I don't know when the market will turn around" from the crypto winter, said Dunamu CEO Lee Sirgoo at a press conference held at the Upbit Developer Conference (UDC), which started at the Busan Port International Exhibition & Convention Center in Busan on Thursday. "But I expect Dunamu to be able to make very meaningful achievements when we create NFTs with HYBE, which has the intellectual property of great artists, including BTS, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, and sell them overseas."

UDC is an annual conference that brings together blockchain developers to discuss the industry's potential while also examining the changes the technology has already brought to daily lives. The theme for the two-day event, which is in its fifth year, is "Imagine your Blockchain Life."

Experts and leaders of the industry, including Lambda256 CEO Jay Park and Henry Hecht-Felella, global strategy and operations lead at Polygon, attended the event, which began with a recorded opening address delivered by Dunamu Chairman Song Chi-hyung.

The NFT business with HYBE is directly led by Song and is the next key business initiative for the exchange.

Dunamu and HYBE established Levvels, a joint venture in the United States, for blockchain applications, including NFT tokens and the decentralized Web 3.0 business. No services have been started yet.

NFTs are unique tokens that are digital representation of the ownership of real-world art, music, video clips and in-game items that are offered in limited quantities.

Lee noted that keeping pace with the global market on creating legal framework is crucial as coin transactions occur globally.

"It would be great if regulations on crypto are quickly passed, but since blockchain and coin transactions occurs globally, the speed should keep pace. In particular, we should legalize based on the reference to the U.S. policy making," Lee added.

Korea's financial regulators plan to publish guidelines for security tokens in the fourth quarter. A separate digital securities market will be established for securities tokens.

On overseas expansion of the crypto exchange business, Lee said there are two ways for Dunamu: to open an office overseas or to start accepting foreign users. He said the latter would make it possible for Dunamu to branch out abroad without physically opening an office, just like Binance offers the service to Korean users without running an office in Seoul.

Dunamu Chairman Song Chi-hyung delivers an opening remark at the Upbit Developer Conference held at the Busan Port International Exhibition & Convention Center in Busan on Thursday. [DUNAMU]

In the opening address, Song projected a new generation will live on the blockchain.

People may "manage their identities through tokens in their daily lives following the crypto winter," said Song in the recorded remarks.

"It's hard to say how long this crypto winter will last, but when it ends, I expect things will be completely different from before." Song added, the "blockchain will present a new direction to the global content market and creator economy fueled by over-the-top services and social media."

But to overcome the crypto winter, blockchain products and services need to be judged on how well they supplement existing products and services.

The blockchain industry went through a similar winter in 2018, when the value of digital assets lost around 70 percent of their value from the peak a year before, but concepts of decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs have continued to evolve since.

DeFi refers to a system where software written on the blockchain makes it possible for buyers, sellers, lenders and borrowers to interact with a strictly software-based middleman rather than going through traditional financial intermediaries, like banks or brokerages. The system enables more efficient and transparent financial transactions, supporters claim.

Song pledged to focus Upbit's compliance and investor protection, and to make meaningful accomplishment with NFTs and Web 3.0 with HYBE by next year.

Web 3.0 is the concept of the next generation of the web in which most users will be connected via a decentralized network.

Speeches on Web 3.0 and metaverse will be delivered on the second day of the UDC by speakers, including Justin Sun, founder of Tron, and Sebastien Borget, co-founder and chief operating officer of The Sandbox.

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]