More regulation for SK crypto exchanges; NFTs kick-start K-pop comeback | The Daily Forkast

Transcript

Speaker1: Welcome to The Daily Forkast, June 17th, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Coming up, Korean crypto exchanges face more regulations. A Blockchain-powered air quality sensor launches in Hong Kong and NFTs kickstart a K-pop comeback. Now let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

In the latest revision to proposed new standards for South Korean crypto exchanges, the FSC or Financial Services Commission in South Korea has confirmed that those exchanges will not be allowed to list self-published tokens on their platforms. The ruling also includes coins issued by any persons affiliated to the exchange. And in addition to that, staff and executives will be barred from trading on the exchanges.

Speaker2: “If the issuer and distributor are the same people, there is, of course, a conflict of interest. So this is to prevent that conflict of interest. Since passing a new law takes a long time, the FSC is adding it to the existing crypto exchange regulations.”

Speaker1: And the FSC says this move is designed to prevent exchanges from manipulating market prices by falsely entering assets into the network. Crypto exchanges are being forced to reapply to conduct business in South Korea under these stricter guidelines, by September 24th. Any exchanges that fail to comply will be forced to shut down.

Now, some exchanges have been scrambling to get ahead of the game on this quickly changing legislation by self-policing. Huobi Korea is one such exchange, who on Tuesday, told Forkast.News that it would be delisting its self-published Huobi Token within two weeks in order to cooperate with authorities.

In Hong Kong, France-based Planetwatch has begun testing air quality sensors that let their owners earn tokens as rewards. Now, these Planet tokens can then be redeemed for environmentally friendly products and services.

Validity of the data has been one of the key challenges globally for monitoring air quality. But these sensors record their data using Algorand’s blockchain. And that means every piece of data goes towards building a global air quality ledger, which cannot be changed. Once an area has many sensors, targeted recommendations to improve the environment can be made based on that hyper-local data.

Speaker3: “You can correlate this data, for example, with traffic data or even with the pattern, the route pattern of a public transport vehicle. And sometimes you can improve things with very small measures like changing the route or schedule of a bus. In other cases, you just see that there is a pattern and then you can advise the population for example, to go out with children and elderly people at some hours and stay at home at other times of day.”

Speaker1: Currently, most air quality monitoring around the world is carried out by governments. And Parrinello says the biggest challenge ahead is getting them on board, especially in areas where air quality is known to be poor.

Crucial to this, he says, is that someone will get the measurement no matter what. So better to just play ball.

And taking a look at the markets, Bitcoin was down just over a percent, dropping a little below US39,300 at 4:00 pm Hong Kong time. And in the top ten for cryptocurrencies — with red virtually across the board. The other biggest losers were Ethereum, which fell 3.3% and Uniswap, which lost 2.3%.

And finally today, one of K-pop’s most prominent idol groups, Brave Girls, are releasing limited edition NFTs just in time for their comeback.

Brave Girls have teamed up with one of South Korea’s largest crypto exchanges Upbit to offer prizes to the first 348 fans who deposit 10,000 Satoshis using Upbit’s direct withdrawal function.

Now winners will receive one of 18 Brave Girls illustrations, some of which are more rare than others.

The K-pop industry, as you know, is often described as more progressive and experimental that’s closely watched globally. Now it appears to be warming up to NFTs.

So, who knows? The next concert you go to — when we can do that again — you might be passing on that band-T and picking up and NFT instead.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.