Kakao, the service provider for South Korea’s leading mobile messaging application KakaoTalk, will create a subsidiary Blockchain temporarily called “Kakao Blockchain” and plans to launch an initial coin offering (ICO), Huffington Post Korea reported today, March 5.

Jae-sun Han, partner and development director of the Future Play incubator, will represent the new organization. The concrete business plan of the Kakao Blockchain subsidiary will be unveiled on March 20, according to Huffington Post Korea.

Given that it is currently illegal to run an ICO based in South Korea, Huffington Post Korea writes that the Kakao ICO would be located in a foreign country, most likely Singapore or Hong Kong. The hypothetical “Kakao Coin” could then be used as an native currency on several applications provided by Kakao, such as KakaoTalk, Kakao Driver and Kakao Games.

Cointelegraph collaborator Joseph Young announced today, March 5, that KakaoTalk and KakaoPay, their mobile payment service, have “a 90% penetration in messaging and fintech markets in South Korea”.

Rumours of a total ban on cryptocurrencies in South Korea led to a sharp fall in crypt markets in January 2018. Since then, the government has indicated that there are no plans to ban cryptocurrencies.

Last month, the popular messaging application Telegram, registered in the British Virgin Islands, reported that it had collected $850 million from 81 investors in what was in fact a private ICO pre-sale. For investors based in the United States, Telegram has filed an exemption with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to ensure that their tokens do not have to be registered as securities and that only so-called accredited investors can contribute.

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