Coinone CEO wants to use his company’s success to expand and secure cryptocurrency markets against ignorant regulation in South Korea.
Coinone CEO Wants to Help Korean Regulators
During the 2017 Bitcoin boom, South Korea made a name for its self as the little country with a big appetite for digital assets. The country of 50 million became one of the largest markets for Bitcoin and Ethereum last year and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinone had a lot to do with that.
Cha Myunghun, CEO of Coinone, saw his exchange grow from 20 employees at the beginning of 2017 to over 100 presently. Coinone serves 643,000 users and reached 23.4 billion Won in revenue during December 2017 according to Forbes. Cha admits that the mass popularity of Bitcoin in 2017 may not have been good for the market but it was great for his company.
Now Cha wants to ensure the healthy growth of his company and the market by expanding his services and working with other exchanges to help guide regulatory practices in the country.
Cha realized the potential of blockchain technology after reading Bitcoin’s white paper more than four years ago. As a white hat hacker and cybersecurity engineer, he immediately saw the opportunities in the remittance market for cryptocurrency as a cheap way to transfer money abroad.
He established Coinone in 2014 and since then has kept ahead of rival exchanges by setting strict technological standards for and making public the technological aspects of listed coins.
As the sharp rise in the cryptocurrency market in late 2017 became the steep slide of early 2018, South Korean regulators began to make extreme and often conflicting comments about what might happen with the local market. There have been rumors that cryptocurrency trading and ICO’s will be banned altogether while regulators find their footing.
Speaking to Forbes Cha said he is confident that the country will not ban cryptocurrency trading, saying that;
“It’s inevitable for the government to be concerned with cryptocurrency. But extreme measures such as the shutdown of exchanges would be going too far against the global trends,”
Expanding Services and Self Imposed Regulation
Cha sees the origin of the regulatory problem is that those making the decisions don’t know enough about the technology behind cryptocurrency. Which is why he and other South Korean crypto leaders have taken an active role in educating government officials as well as setting self-imposed rules on their own exchanges like Know Your Customer (KYC) tactics and limits to how many accounts users can open.
Closer to home Cha plans on growing Coinone into a diverse fintech company that provides a host of services including exchange, remittance, and insurance. The first of these expansions will launch in May as part of a joint venture with other Southeast Asian crypto exchanges.
In regards to his future plans for Coinone Cha told Forbes “Last year was a good year for us, with the investment boom. But we need to show the value of blockchain technology, and I want Coinone to keep progressing over the next 10 years,”