Blockchain is no longer a technology concept, it is starting to be applied to real life and is becoming a big and irreversible trend, said Lee Sirgoo, CEO of Dunamu, during the Upbit Developers Conference last week.
“When the Internet first emerged, exponential growth began after services that people can use in real life and as for artificial intelligence, after years of research, it only started to receive attention when it was translated into real services,” Lee noted.
“There’s no doubt that blockchain has become a major trend that no one can deny that it is permeating our everyday lives,” Lee said.
During the company’s annual UDC, held online on Wednesday and Thursday, the lineup of speakers and presentations showed how the global blockchain industry is evolving rapidly every year and many services are no longer a concept or a league of blockchain enthusiasts. One such example was participation of executives from an auction house and a credit card company.
Cuy Sheffield, Vice President and Chief Crypto Officer at Visa, one of the established financial services companies venturing into the cryptocurrency space, noted that blockchain-based payment methods are making waves in the payments industry and outlined five notable trends: Bitcoin, Stablecoin , Decentralized Finance, NFT, for example, Bitcoin as digital gold is becoming increasingly popular as a new asset class, especially among the younger generations, said Sheffield. And stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency tied to flat currency assets like the US dollar to stabilize prices, play a role as treasury infrastructure.
“The average transaction value of Stablecoins is north of $10,000, and this is really becoming a new way that institutions and businesses can transfer dollars across the world and enable it settle very quickly and efficiently,” Sheffield noted, adding that many startups are already developing services based on Stablecoins.
One of the most discussed topics at UDC was non-fungible tokens, non-duplicable blockchain-based digital certificates that relate to real objects like art and music. NFTs have been in the headlines since earlier this year when artist Beeple sold an NFT for a whopping $ 69 million. Since then, artists and dealers began to pay special attention to the novel idea. Lee Jungbong Lee, CEO of Seoul Auction Blue, said that the combination of NFT and art has undefined potential and will therefore continue to grow.
“By 2030, the NFT metaverse is expected to be several times larger than the 400 billion-won domestic art market,” Lee said.
Although less noticeable than NFTs, more and more companies are integrating blockchain technologies at various levels of their operations and services.
“We’re seeing a huge movement of big enterprises and little enterprises to be using DLT for real-world problems and real applications,” Leemon Baird, Co-founder of Hedera Hashgraph, said. DLT is decentralized ledger technology, a digital system for recording things such as asset transactions, in which the details are recorded in multiple places at the same time. Blockchain is one type of DLT.
Not only are companies and art collectors turning to blockchain technology, but governments are also examining the potential of digital currencies regardless of the stage of their economic development, said Jin Changho, principal of Kearney Korea.
“CBDC will lead innovation in payment and payment process with the digital wallet and financial products while coexisting with the existing financial order,” he added.
Dunamu introduced UDC in 2018 at the height of the first wave of cryptocurrencies to improve understanding of blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies. Since then, over the past three years, the conference has gathered attendees from more than 600 companies, 7,000 attendees, and 250,000 YouTube views in the past years. This is the event of the year with 8,000 pre-registrations and a record of around 65,000 total views on YouTube, reflects an increased interest in the blockchain industry.
