South Korean Finance Minister Praises Blockchain Technology

During the last couple of months, South Korea has had an interesting attitude towards digital currencies, considering the fact that there have been several talks to end trading and further regulate general coin use within the country.

However, while South Korea may not have a positive attitude towards digital currencies, they are looking forward to future implementations of blockchain technology, given its huge potential. With this in mind, recent reports indicate that the South Korean Finance Minister, Kim Dong-yeon made a few statements about the potential of the blockchain and future plans to regulate cryptocurrencies.

Based on this aspect, during a meeting with the governor of the People’s Bank of China, the South Korean Finance Minister mentioned that: “Blockchain technology is an important technological breakthrough to fuel the fourth industrial revolution and as such, the ministry will take a cautious approach in regulating the cryptocurrency market. For negative use cases of cryptocurrencies, the ministry will impose strict regulations.”

Therefore, by referring to blockchain as the fourth industrial revolution, the South Korean government seems to have great hopes in the future of the technology. Additionally, it seems like strict regulations will now only be imposed for the potential negative uses of digital currencies, not the general market.

Not only this, but in another statement, the minister of finance mentioned that: “For open-source blockchain networks, cryptocurrencies are necessary as incentives for individuals to participate in the network.”

For many, this means that the government is no longer planning a full ban on trading, but rather a regulatory framework that would help regulate all aspects of being involved with digital currencies, similar to what is done to fiat. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, yet the amount of regulation that can be imposed on crypto is far lower when compared to fiat, which is government by a centralized institution.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, it is likely that the digital currency market in South Korea will not be dried out by the government. Once prices recover, then chances are that trading volumes may increase yet again, but this time, they’ll be closely regulated.