Kim Yongbeom, CEO of Hashed Open Research, "The Status of Virtual Assets Will Grow Larger"

'Korea Blockchain Week 2024' Keynote Speech

Kim Yong-beom, CEO of Hashed Open Research, attended the main conference event of 'Korea Blockchain Week 2024' held on the morning of the 3rd at Grand Walkerhill Seoul in Gwangjang-dong, Seoul, as a keynote speaker. Photo by Cha Min-young

"The debate over the status of virtual assets as financial assets ended long ago. The position of virtual assets, currently ranked around 10th in the global financial market, will only grow stronger."

Kim Yong-beom, CEO of Hashed Open Research, attended the main conference event of 'Korea Blockchain Week 2024 (KBW2024)' held on the morning of the 3rd at the Grand Walkerhill Seoul in Gwangjang-dong, Seoul, as a keynote speaker. The topic of his speech was "The Ownership Revolution: Four Approaches to Evaluating the Future of Digital Assets."

He opened his remarks by mentioning the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, the "Bitcoin Genesis Block." Genesis means "beginning," and it is intertwined with the development story of Bitcoin by its creator, Nakamoto Satoshi. Still shrouded in mystery, Satoshi is known to have developed Bitcoin during the 2009 global financial crisis, recognizing the need for decentralized currency.

CEO Kim argued that "the ownership revolution suitable for the 21st century is tokenization." He has emphasized the most important reason to focus on blockchain technology as "blockchain as ownership." In a situation where big tech companies are increasing beyond national borders, he highlighted the need for ownership management, transfer, and regulation methods appropriate for the digital economy.

He also paid attention to the Bank of Korea's digital currency (CBDC) development project. Kim stated, "Central banks around the world are closely monitoring the potential of blockchain and participating in experiments," and evaluated that "the Bank of Korea's CBDC development is a meaningful project and not just a Korean initiative but a competition among global central banks for CBDC competitiveness."

Kim previously served as the 1st Vice Minister of Strategy and Finance and Vice Chairman of the Financial Services Commission, leading macroeconomic and financial policies. Notably, he was the person who established virtual asset policies during his tenure as Vice Chairman of the Financial Services Commission in 2018. At that time, while the Minister of Justice and others leaned toward closing virtual asset exchanges, Kim contributed to sustaining the domestic virtual asset market by creating systems such as the real-name verification system.

Now in its 7th year, KBW is founded and hosted by FactBlock, a "Web3 ecosystem builder," and co-hosted by blockchain venture capital (VC) Hashed. The main conference, held over two days on the 3rd and 4th, sold out early with 9,000 online pre-registered attendees.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.