Metaverse hot in South Korea; Decentralized theme park hits HK | The Daily Forkast

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, June, 29th, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Coming up, metaverse funds are becoming the latest hot topic in South Korea, a decentralized theme park prototype hits Hong Kong, and Forkast.News continues its new series exploring China’s big bet on blockchain. Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

Well, metaverse funds are the hot new investment trend in South Korea. With the country’s biggest asset management firms now scrambling to get in on the game. KB Asset Management leaped in first launching their fund into this collective, virtual shared world earlier this month. Samsung Asset Management followed just this week, and Mirae Asset Management could be next as it is considering an ETF.

“I do expect a large amount of capital flow into the metavers. But since retail investors find it difficult to make investment decisions [in the metaverse], asset managers are creating funds run by experts to help investors make the choices.”

The metaverse is where the virtual world meets the real world with big names, including Roblox and Naver’s Zepeto. Both are included within the first two funds to launch as are Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, who all sell or are developing augmented reality devices.

Global consulting firm PwC is predicting that the virtual and augmented reality economy, which the metaverse economy is based on, will grow from US$46.4 billion in 2019 to US$1.5 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030.

Speaking of virtual worlds, could a theme park exist in both the metaverse and in real life? Well, that’s the idea behind a new, decentralized theme park concept that has just opened its doors inside Hong Kong’s Ocean Park. And Forkast.News‘ Lucas Cacioli was one of the first to see it. Children visiting can create avatars to explore a virtual world. It’s just a prototype at the moment, but its developer, Immersive One, says it’s not just for fun.

“We also can imagine that for kids, they can create their first NFT. Maybe at age three already. And they can learn the crypto economy. Yeah, that’s the thing.”

“That’s very educational. Get them ready for the financial system of the future.”

Instead of swapping coupons for throw-away prizes in the arcade, the younger generation could earn digital currencies as credits for food or even entrance tickets for their next visit to the park by playing games. And as the blockchain supporting the decentralized theme park as public visitors may eventually be able to trade their avatars on the open market.

Okay, onto the real markets now. Today, as of 4 p.m. Hong Kong local time, Bitcoin was down almost a quarter of a percent at just under US$35,000. That’s as the hashrate fell to its lowest level since August 2019. Analysis from Glassnodes suggests that the Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment could actually get easier by as much as 25% at the next reset on July 3rd.

And in the top 10 for a cryptocurrencies on a mixed day of trading, Polkadot is up almost 6% and Ethereum is up almost 4.5%.

And finally, in part two of our special three-part series out today, Blockchain in Asia Defining the Race, Forkast.News with support with the Judith Nielsen Institute’s Asian Stories Project, explores how China’s vision for a digital currency of its own is actually spread throughout the region and beyond.

“The race is on to lead not just the region, but the world in the blockchain and digital currency space. And Charles d’Haussy has been keeping a close eye on all of it. He’s Asia-Pacific managing director at ConsenSys, which is the enterprise arm that drives Ethereum use in the industry. His role is to help businesses and governments think about how to use blockchain. D’Haussy says it’s a race indeed, just not a sprint.

“It’s a mountain and there’s many different peak of CBDCs. So we’ve seen it through Covid, Asia being hit first, but also recovering really fast. And we see on many of the topics such as CBDCs, Asia leading the way and building really the next generation of digital societies with CBDCs.”

You can read part two of the series and see the full video report up now on Forkast.News.

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.