Korea Blockchain Week is South Korea’s largest Blockchain conference to be held annually in the city of Seoul. A conference that houses a variety of speakers from across the globe and has become a popular meeting ground for startups eager to unveil to the world what they’ve been working on in the field of blockchain.

Attracting thousands of eager visionaries, investors, punters, and developers. The Korean Blockchain Week is one of the most anticipated conferences to attend in the crypto space. While not all startups benefit from conferences, there were some that made headlines and definitely turned heads with blockbuster announcements. Let’s dive through a recap on some of the top highlights of KBW 2019, summarizing the main details of the event that seem to have caught the attention of the cryptosphere.

Here are some of the key notable mentions:

HDAC

HDAC is a blockchain company founded by Hyundai BS & C, a renowned Automotive manufacturer that’s vocal about seeing the opportunities that DLT has to offer. The startup has been busy working behind the scenes to ensure the launch of Hdac’s mainnet, scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2020. Lead by the CEO Dae Sun Chung and backed by Hyundai, HDAC are currently focused on developing a new PoS blockchain, the creation of a Blockchain Fund Expansion plan, and studying the potential use-cases of Blockchain for enterprise solutions.

The startup has pledged to invest $10 million in a bid to launch a fully-deployable Testnet & Mainnet, capable of supporting a dApps ecosystem. Dae Sun Ching has urged that those interested in partaking should look forward to the Mainnet launch. He further commented that HDAC is designing and setting up a fund that would support upcoming projects through a ‘’cryptocurrency compensation system’’.

The main agenda behind the project is to establish a pool of funds and the creation of an innovation hub that would contribute to the development of a distributed network supported by both the public and private sectors. Hyundai’s token company, HDAC stands for ‘’Hyundai Digital Asset Company’’ which wants to design decentralized applications that would not only integrate into the car company’s latest innovations but also give birth to a blockchain-based ecosystem of dApps and services. Next on our list...

Mike Novogratz

Michael Novogratz is a billionaire and ex-hedge fund manager of the Fortress Investment Group. One of the most prominent figures of the space, he spoke at DFINE and shared his insights at KBW19. As the CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings, he believes that the majority of altcoins that exist today will struggle to meet investor's expectations, citing that this is due to the long-term sustainability issues. Placing emphasis that projects have failed to build an ecosystem, nor managed to attract the interests of institutions and people, as to how Bitcoin attracts new investors over time. Further commenting that Altcoins failed to produce utility despite having raised capital, advising that such projects must look up to Bitcoin and treat virtual currencies as speculative assets similar to making venture bets in early-stage startups.

Novogratz explained;

“There was a lot of junk that raised a lot of capital but did not have sustainability. They promised a lot of protocols and an ecosystem they are going to build, and then they would attract users to the ecosystem making it a speculative asset. In order to keep a speculative market alive, you need fuel in the form of news and updates from time to time. We must look at these tokens as venture bets”

Terra

The CEO of the South Korean startup has made 4 major announcements at the KBW 2019 this year with revelations of their latest updates surrounding partnerships & future expansion plans.

For starters, CHAI has officially become available in Yanolja, South Korea’s №1 hotel booking service. Terra is also collaborating with the nation’s leading duty-free market leaders, Shinsegae Duty-Free, in a bid of supporting global payments in Hong Kong.

Terra further announced its plan for expansion, revealing that the startup looks to venture into the offline payments industry through the collaborating with CU. CU is a major convenience store with over 14,000+ retail chain outlets, dubbed the ‘’711’’ of Korea that will soon allow users to pay using the CHAI app. CHAI, Terra’s mobile payment dApp is set to launch CHAI debit cards powered by BC Card by early 2020. South Korea’s largest payment processor, will allow all of CHAI users to spend Crypto through the use of a debit card, catering to millions of users and affiliate partners that are part of a unified network.

With all the announcements, Terra is set to make CHAI one of the most used payment services in the East Asian country and seeks to provide more on & off fiat-to-crypto ramps. Terra is unfolding across all customer touchpoints, by evolving the customers’ purchase journey by making it incredibly easy for the average users to spend Crypto at convenience stores, and more.

This sums the main highlights of the Korean Blockchain Week 2019, which featured more than 50 Speakers who have gathered in Seoul to share their insights surrounding the virtual applications of Blockchain technology. Stay tuned for KBW 2020!