800 South Korean Companies Work With Crypto: Report

Despite the “dead market” which is a major topic in the cryptocurrency news these days as analysts suggest, a report shows that over 800 South Korean companies are doing business in cryptocurrencies. The figures were compiled by the regulatory Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

According to reports by Aju News, a parliamentary committee asked the FSS to reveal how many companies in the country had corporate cryptocurrency exchange-linked accounts with domestic banks.

The FSS surveyed 19 commercial banks in South Korea, discovering that there are now over 800 South Korean corporate cryptocurrency accounts in operation. This marks a huge increase from the last time FSS surveyed banks. As a reminder, back in 2015 there were only 156 banks.

“Banks are managing cryptocurrency transactions despite the fact that the government does not officially recognize cryptocurrencies as having value. The government has been flip-flopping on its cryptocurrency policy for two years – it’s high time it made up its mind about where it stands on cryptocurrencies,” the report showed.

The data also shows that the overwhelming majority of corporate cryptocurrency exchange account customers are banking with Shinhan Bank, which right now has 257 business clients.

On the second place we can see the IBK Bank with 136 clients, followed by Kookmin Bank with 120, Woori Bank with 115 and KEB Hana Bank with 75 clients, respectively. All of the banks have alunched crypto and/or blockchain business arms in recent years. At one point, Shinhan was hoping to introduce a cryptocurrency custody service – which is a plan that it has but is shelved due to the Moon Jae-in government’s cryptocurrency crackdown which occurred in 2017 and 2018.

Right now, the reports show that over 800 South Korean companies  deal with crypto. However, pundits in the East Asian region claimed that business in South Korea is “dead” with high saturation and what they call “low volatility.”

According to Dovey Wan who is a founding partner at the California-based investment company Primitive Ventures, while the market leader Bithumb has been keeping a relatively low profile in its home country, it is definitely pushing ahead with its planned overseas expansion.

Korea market is pretty dead … even with fiat on-ramp the highly speculative community there is VERY fatigued due to low volatility too (and it’s saturated long before imo)

The fact that Bitthumb started Bitthumb global initiative to expand globally says so 🧐

— Dovey 以德服人 Wan 🪐🦖 (@DoveyWan) October 21, 2019

In contrast, there were some Twitter users who agreed that South Koran speculators “have their hands in their pockets.”