23 May 2022
VNX hosted its second Luxembourg – South Korea Digital Asset Summit in Luxembourg as a part of the Finverse Forum on May 18. The event brought together the most renowned experts from both countries to discuss the hottest news, fresh trends and use cases in the digital assets market. VNX started the tradition of holding the summit back in 2019 in South Korea as part of the Official Mission of Luxembourg organized by the Chamber of Commerce. Digital Asset Summit began with an opening speech from our special guest Jaeyong Ahn, Director of KOTRA Brussels, the Korean Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.
Not surprising that one the most discussable topic of the event was the recent collapse of the Terra algorithmic stablecoin (UST) along with its reserve asset Luna. The precedent of the third-largest stablecoin unpegging from the dollar price has caused a strong reaction from the crypto community and drawn the attention of regulators worldwide.
Jake Lee, the Chief Strategy Officer of the one of the top Korean crypto exchanges GOPAX, has made an insightful analysis of the situation with UST and its implications. The main question was what are the alternatives? So he made an overview of stablecoin types, underlining the difference between algorithmic and asset-backed stablecoins. As an alternative to unstable algorithmic coins Jake considered asset-backed stablecoins as they have entities behind them with treasuries, cash and sophisticated instruments to back their issuance.
“Such assets have been gaining popularity and they should be more steady than other stablecoins. – said Jake Lee and continued. – VNX has also introduced several metal-backed utility tokens. VNX Gold being one of them. And these can also be very attractive alternatives in a world where other stablecoins showed their vulnerability”.
The topic of stablecoins and their post-LUNA future was also raised during the panel discussion that gathered together well-known fintech experts: Alexander Tkachenko, CEO and Founder, VNX; Michael Jackson, Chairman of Arcane Crypto AS; Max Shin, CEO, Burrito Wallet, former CEO of Bithumb Custody; Youngjun Jang, Co-founder and General Partner, Edimus capital.
The LUNA incident once again highlighted the importance of digital assets regulation. During the discussion speakers have come to an opinion that a clear regulation is needed in order to attract institutional and traditional investors to the crypto world.
“If you want massive adaptation from the traditional and institutional investors the regulation has to be very clear. And now the government and industry should work together to set it up” – Max Shin, CEO of Burrito Wallet, former CEO of Bithumb Custody.
But even though regulation is needed, the balance is important as well, because overregulation kills innovation. Michael Jackson, one of the founders of Skype, compared this problem with excessive control from the regulator to the digital communication services at the time of their appearance two decades ago. The regulator saw Skype as a phone substitute and tried to force service providers to implement rudiments such as a phone book of all users and the ability to call emergency services. And if providers wouldn’t push back on that, services like Skype or Zoom probably wouldn’t have existed. And this is what we have to think about as we move into a new paradigm with digital assets. Michael believes that the task of the regulator is to develop legislation that can protect investors, but at the same time not scare off innovators. And the experts expect the industry to get to this point shortly:
“We’re going to see that [regulation] developing over the next year and out of that are going to come tremendous opportunities where investors are going to be able to invest in the space safely, securely, and reliably” – Michael Jackson, Chairman of Arcane Crypto AS.
Youngjun Jang, Co-founder and General Partner at Edimus capital, believes that with the introduction of regulation, crypto investments are getting easier for a newcomers:
“I think we are at a very important reflection point in the crypto market, existing players like me have to adopt our strategies, because the market changes so rapidly. And for the people who are already on the sideline, thinking about joining the crypto world, they can do it much easier now with the upcoming regulation”.
Summing up the panel discussion, Alexander Tkachenko shared a case of gold-backed stablecoin – VNX Gold – which has all the qualities to be considered truly stable and reliable: VNX Gold is fully backed by an underlain asset and meets the regulatory requirements.
“VNX gold is a representation of the gold, which is owned by a particular customer. So it’s 100% gold-back. And therefore it’s easy for the institutional investors who are approaching the crypto market to understand what they’re investing in” – stated Alexander Tkachenko, CEO of VNX.
Digital assets are gradually being introduced into businesses and our daily lives. Korean journalist Suho Park shared the case study of MK Economy, Korea’s top business media, on how journalism adopts crypto and NFT.
The summit concluded with an exciting pitch session of the best Korean NFT-related startups led by KOTRA Brussels:
VNX was pleased to host the second summit, bringing together the best digital asset experts from Korea and Luxembourg, helping to establish a dialogue and share the experience of these innovative countries.
Please refer to vnx.li web-page for original article.