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The Korea Herald
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THE INVESTOR
March 30, 2024

Next-gen cryptocurrencies will invigorate digital coin market: expert

  • PUBLISHED :February 09, 2018 - 17:06
  • UPDATED :February 09, 2018 - 23:18
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[THE INVESTOR] The cryptocurrency market will continue to grow despite growing skepticism thanks to the emergence of new types of digital coins, according to Park Chang-ki, the CEO of blockchain firm GovernTech.

“The so-called third-generation digital coins, which are more advanced than existing ones, including bitcoin and ethereum, will soon join mainstream and eventually create greater opportunities than the Internet,” said Park at the Blockchain 3.0 industry conference held in Seoul on Feb. 8, forecasting that the coins will be able to compete with the US dollar in a decade.




Park is a seasoned entrepreneur who experienced at firsthand the 1990s dot com bubble and its subsequent collapse.

He established Paxnet, an online securities and financial information firm, in 1999, and proceeded the first initial coin offering in Korea through blockchain firm BlockchainOS that he set up in 2015. The blockchain firm raised 17 billion won (US$15.6 million) through the ICO.

After stepping down from the CEO post at the blockchain startup last year, he is now running GovernTech.

He remarks came as most cryptocurrencies have saw their value drop to the lowest in recent weeks, further stoking concerns that cryptocurrencies will fail.

Bitcoin, which he calls the first-gen coin, is sort of an entirely decentralized global single bank that allows anyone can exchange currencies with each other while the second-gen coin ethereum was a global single computer applied with smart contract technology, useful for businesses, he said.

The two coins, however, have been facing a series of hurdles in expanding their presence, including a relatively long latency in transaction and high costs, often pointed out by skeptics.

For example, it is almost impossible to recoup the coins when they are stolen or lost nor to upgrade them in real time, according to Park

He said, however, the creation of bitcoin and ethereum was a monumental event in that it showed what could be done through blockchain technology.

Those issues with the earlier cryptocurrency models will be solved in the next-gen coins, such as EOS in the US, NEO in China, and ADA in Japan. Those third-generation coins have improved features, such as self-evolvement, low cost, and fast transactions, the GovernTech CEO said.

“Combined with artificial intelligence and big data, those new coin technologies based on the blockchain will be able to serve as a personal data vault, which grants every individual with the ownership of their personal data,” he said.

Lawmakers, experts and academics, including entrepreneur-turned-politician Kim Byung-kwan, robot company FutureRobot Song Se-kyung, Keio University professor Natsuno Takeshi and Lotte Members CEO Kang Seung-ha, participated in the conference.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)

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