Special 1:🔥 Crypto still HUGE in Korea? WaykiChain Hackathon and Bitcoin Center (Korea Pt 1/2)

Yo yo, what's up everyone? I'm in Hong Kong airport on my way to Seoul in South Korea. You know, South Korea has been a huge, huge technological innovator and adopter. And we're going to check out what's happening in the crypto scene there. Another reason why I'm so excited for this trip is that every time I talk to funds, they always say, check out South Korea. That's where all the real volume is. So I want to really see if the hype is still going on. The trip itself actually spanned over a week and I visit multiple projects. So what I decided to do is to split this video into multiple parts. So part one will cover the Waikichain hackathon and the local Seoul Korea Bitcoin center. And then part two of the video will cover ICON and Cary protocol. Arriving in the Ghanem district, obviously the first thing to do is the Ghanem style. So it's Friday night here in Seoul and I'm in the Ghanem district, right outside the blockchain cafe. So upstairs is the Waikichain and Huobi hackathon. There'll be hackers here hacking all night. That's really work ethic for you. Friday night working their asses off all night. So let's go upstairs and check out what they're working on. The rules of the hackathon is simple. There are nine teams. They have 24 hours to develop a prototype and the winner gets $20,000. Yeah, actually we are holding a hackathon here and to find some good developers and good development teams. And to find some good DApps and whether we have some good ideas that can be built on our blockchain. Right, so you're doing this in South Korea. Why choose South Korea? Because there are a lot of good developers here. And you know South Korea is a country that's famous on gaming industry, right? So we have a lot of game developers here and they have a very good culture on developing on blockchain. And the people here know blockchain and they know smart contracts. So there's not a lot of learning costs here and it's more popular here. So that's the reason why we choose here. I went around the scene checking out who's there and asked them how they got into crypto. How did you get into crypto? How did you get here? I think I got into crypto for the fact that it supports digital finance. And currently right now, if you try to move money from one country to another, you're gonna get taxed with 10%. Like easily. The more I'm filming these guys, the more I'm learning about this. You know, like it goes up one week, it goes down the next. But you know, since we put some money into it, it's steadily going up. So for us, like, okay, we see how it goes really, you know? What? Ah, blockchain. Ah, it's all scam. 100%. Actually, the blockchain industry is quite new. And I feel excited to join a new industry because nobody has to do the same thing before. Right? So everything we make might be the first in the world. So that makes me exciting. Really, really excited to enter this industry. I jumped into the blockchain industry from Alibaba. And Alibaba, they have a mature industry and they have a lot of industry experiences. They have talents on over like 10 years experience. But for blockchain, nobody has over 10 years experience. Right? So if I can make some innovation in this industry, I can be the first one in the world. That's really good for me. For current public blockchain, their token economy has some problems. Right? They're just using one token for all the situations. And that's wrong. Because for the payment, why we are using a token with price fluctuation for payment? Right? We're going to need a stablecoin. Our stablecoin is developed based on the bottom layer of the blockchain. I just list one function that MakerDOT cannot do. We can use stablecoin to pay gas. Right. Because if you are developing a DApp using DAI or using other stablecoins, right? You're going to buy some Ethereum to pay the gas. But in WKchain, you don't need to do so. You can just hold the stablecoin and play the DApp and use the stablecoin to pay the gas. So that's convenient for both users and developers. Smile, hey! Have you fun? Very nerdy. It's true. It's the smell of a true hackathon. It's not pizza, sweat. It's amazing. I need to go to a hotel. I need to bring some of the smell back. After smelling the pizza, I got to have my own slice and bring some of that smell back to my hotel room. So coming on to day two, we're greeted by a lot of guests who wanted to see what results, what hackathon results there were. And also there were some panicked speakers trying to fix some last minute hypers. Cy-cy-cy-proto currency. I'm just joking. Now it's time to judge who has the best project and who will get the $20,000 prize. So the first thing I just want to say to everyone here, it's actually really impressive to see how much development got done in these 24 hours. It really says a lot to how dedicated these Korean hackers, developers are, and also how easy, like how many modules there are, like Node.js, that makes development a lot easier. And there was a lot of variety too, from games on the blockchain, to TV stations, to even charities and how to do transparent listings. It's really cool to see this is the birthing ground of new ideas. There was one trend I didn't like too much, which was that eight out of the nine teams decided to issue their own cryptocurrency. And honestly, many of these situations you don't have to. A stablecoin or even Bitcoin would have been better. But I think what they wanted to do was they wanted to raise money and potentially impress members of the audience who could, you know, go for an ICO or something like that. But I feel like right now we're still stuck in that phase where developers are enticed by quick money. But what they really need to solve is to solve underlying issues and create the best economy that's suitable for their project. After much deliberating, the winner was YQTV, a project that will pit content creators to fight against each other and participants. And viewers can place cryptocurrency stakes on who they think were going to win that battle. All right, guys, I just got to the Seoul Bitcoin Center here. So you can see that little Bitcoin sign here behind me. It's a really great gathering place for anyone who's into cryptocurrencies. So let's go upstairs and check out what they're doing here. So guys here, I'm here with John. And John, you're the founder of the Bitcoin Center here in Korea. Yes. So a lot has happened since we last met. I think we last met. 2017, yes. 2017 and the hype. So a lot has changed in Korea. So what's happening to the scene right now? Is it still hype, are people still here or what's happening? I think the general feeling is way more mature. The market has matured and people are, they learn from a lot of their mistakes. And they've lived through that hype and crash. So a lot of people are more resilient and mature. So the reaction is not hype type of reaction. So they're more calm and they like to take a step back and decide from their more neutral, mature standpoint. This time I think this round, it feels a little bit different. It's more mature investors and institutions and almost even the government side. It feels different. So before it was just more like a gambling. This time it was very calculated risk. So it feels again, very mature. People are considering, okay, if this affects the global economy and what's going to happen to devaluation of the currencies and all these things. Okay. Then what's the better asset to hold? Is it gold? Is it Bitcoin? So all these things, you know, we didn't consider before. People are now talking about it. So that's the difference. People are also a threat. People were to come. Like this trade war, people thought it was nothing until suddenly, oh, it's happening between US, China, now Korea, Japan. It seems like trade war is becoming a political tool now and that's drastically affecting everything. Yes, that's a very scary thing. But yeah, that seems to be the trend. Is there demand? So right now, what's the currency control situation like? Because we know like I know China and China has a very strict border control when it comes to the currency. Is South Korea very similar as well? Yes, very similar. Very similar restrictions. So are people looking at Bitcoin as a way to transfer money like globally, kind of almost to skirt sanctions or something like that to really move currency around? I think yes and no. There's always going to be that kind of demand, but I don't think Korea is not as strong as China when it comes to that, you know, tight money control. So if you have the proper document, if you have the proper reason, you know, the Korean government, they don't stop you. You know, you're free to transfer money. Right. As long as you have proper document and reason. So I don't think it's not. So it's not a weaponized war in the sense that this is weaponized for. Not yet. Not yet. Yeah. It's not like Venezuela. Right. But I think there's always demand where people are considering now slowly considering what if, right, Korea does become more like China and unfortunately more like Venezuela. So people are now considering what's the worst case scenario and how can we be prepared and hedge against this. You've been having a discussion about the Busan region. So what do you think it's going to go? I'm going to another event. They're having a town hall event to discuss this. So this is very new. Not many people know about it. I think a few key representatives from industry, government and just that they're going to, it's open discussion, town hall meeting where they can, you know, answer questions from the audience. So I'm not sure. Let's go ahead and check it out. The really interesting developments of the day today. So I was at the Bitcoin center and it turned out that there, we found out about this event happening today with the government of Korea and they're doing a Q and A about what they're going to do with blockchain. So right now I'm in the hash offices here. So this is the hash lounge. The Korean government is opening up the Busan district to be a regulation free zone for blockchain. And they're extremely welcoming for new technologies. And that concludes the first part of my adventures in South Korea. So something that's very apparent is the changes in the tone since my last visit, which was in 2017. And in 2017, you saw a huge amount of speculation that was at the height of the crypto bubble and Korea was really in many senses leading it. There was so much speculation that there was a price premium in Korea called the kimchi premium. And at that time, it was just like everyone was talking about it and everyone was trading it as if it's like a video game. Koreans were using their Starcraft skills, trading, going 200 actions per second, trading on various exchanges, trying to make money and scalp the market. Now it's very different. It's much, in fact, it's different. You can almost say it's sad to see that the hype, the fever is dying, but at the same time, there's a maturation. The market is much more mature now. People have a much better understanding of what's happening. And the government really took a reverse role. Before in 2017, they were trying to slam on the brakes, trying to add increased regulation, banning those ICOs, kicking them out. Now coming into 2019, what we see is that the government is taking big steps to try to push for adoption. But the caveat, of course, is that they don't want to speculate in coins. So they don't want to talk about particular coins. They're contracting contractors to build private blockchains, etc. And what we see right now is that first area opening up where Busan is now becoming the kind of new area for crypto innovation with reduced, you know, what they say is regulation free. But what we can probably understand is it's reduced regulation, but it's still strong government oversight. John really put it the best when we were on the car. He said that now when the media TV talks about cryptocurrencies, they no longer have to do a five minute segment explaining what it is. We're beyond that phase. People understand cryptocurrencies already. Now, what they're interested in now is what it can really do, the real developments. And from what I saw at the Waikichain Hackathon, there's a lot of very brilliant young minds in South Korea really thinking about how to deliver what is coming up next. And I'd like to say a big thank you to Waikichain to sponsoring the trip to South Korea. Without them, this trip would not have been possible. So a big, big thank you to Waikichain. And next up, we got the requested visit to the ICON offices. And we also got Carry Protocol, where they're integrating blockchain based rewards to hundreds of thousands of restaurants and cafes around South Korea. And also more updates from the Seoul Bitcoin Center. So make sure you stay tuned. It's coming up right next and I'll see you in the next video.