South Korea’s second largest and the world’s fifth biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has announced the launch of the countries first domestic cryptocurrency index.
Korea’s First Domestic Index
Dunamu, the holding company that owns Upbit announced on March 22 the start of its new cryptocurrency index the UBCI (Upbit Cryptocurrency Index).
As reported by Business Korea UBCI has been in the works since the launch of the Upbit exchange in October of 2017 with a goal of advising local investors on how to trade in the market as well as becoming a standard index internationally.
UBCI will measure four indices of the market based on long-term transaction data pulled from the Upbit exchange as follows:
- Market index – will be a market cap that will allow investors to measure the progress of all coins quickly.
- Sector Index – will classify coins in each sector.
- Bitcoin Index- Will follow the progress of Bitcoin prices.
- Strategy Index – Will be an indicator that will measure trade profits in accordance with an investment rule.
Upbit plans to launch the UBCI market, sector and Bitcoin indices in April while the strategy index will come later.
Song Chi-Hyung grew Upbit in October 2017 from Dunamu which he started in 2012 as a news aggregator but pivoted to FinTech while still in its early days. In 2013, he allied with Kakao to create KakaoStock, a mobile stock trading app that boasts some 300,000 users.
In October 2017 Dunamu along with Kakao again partnered with US-based Bittrex to create Upbit. In just three months Upbit had topped the global trade market by handling an average daily trade volume of $4.7 billion and a record of $11 billion in just one day. Upbit continues to rank among the worlds largest exchanges in the third largest market for cryptocurrency trading globally.
Chi-Hyung Likens Crypto to Fiat Market
As his first company Dunamu was rooted in the trading news of the traditional stock market Song is comfortable comparing the Fiat and cryptomarket when commenting on the launch of UBCI
“The present situation of the cryptocurrency market is quite similar to the traditional financial market based on stocks and bonds in its early stage … accordingly, as the market gets more sophisticated, the UBCI is expected to play an important role in this area in the future. We will also disclose the index rulebook and let the market evaluate it before long,” said Song.
The Korean cryptocurrency market is one of the three largest in the world but exchanges in place are still awaiting finalization on how the government plans to regulate the industry. Since rumors of a total ban came post-market correction in December 2017 the government has announced it may adopt a licensing model similar to that of New York.