Science ministry losing presence in cryptocurrency plan
By Kang Seung-woo
The Ministry of Science and ICT is failing to be heard in the cryptocurrency craze despite its role of taking charge of technological innovation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
This is in sharp contrast to ICT industries’ calls for the government to take a cautious approach to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology that underpins them.
Last week, Justice Minister Park Sang-ki said the government plans to ban cryptocurrency trading to cool the overheating domestic market. Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku also expressed his intention Monday to tackle irrational cryptocurrency speculation.
As the government’s focus is shifting to regulating cryptocurrencies, the science ministry’s policies are nowhere to be seen in such countermeasures and Minister You Young-min has maintained a theoretical position that cryptocurrencies and blockchain should not be on a par with each other.
Critics say the ministry is struggling to perform its duty to prepare for future transformations, failing to aggressively promote the importance of the blockchain technology.
Blockchain is an open distributed ledger system that propels digital tokens, and is regarded as a game-changer in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. IT companies have been making investments and enlarging related businesses from last year. Industry tracker Gartner estimated the blockchain market will reach $10 billion (10.6 trillion won) by 2022.
“The science ministry is just concerned about the negative views on the cryptocurrency frenzy spreading to blockchain, but it falls short of promoting future prospects for the technology,” said an IT sector official.
Unlike the ministry, IT industries are going to great lengths to prevent the blockchain technology from being turned backwards on the path of scientific progress.
“It is important to protect investors (from a possible price bubble), but it is not smart to close down cryptocurrency exchanges thoughtlessly in terms of preparing for the future,” said CEO Lee Sir-goo of UPbit, the nation’s largest digital money exchange, on Facebook. Lee was a founder of Kakao, the operator of the country’s most popular chat app, Kakao Talk.
Naver Co-Founder Kim Jeong-ho echoed Lee’s view.
“When a new technology comes and it triggers some side-effects, the government first considers regulating and banning it. This is an outcome of a never ending bureaucracy,” Kim said on his social network service account.
Lee Byung-tae, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), also said cryptocurrencies and blockchain cannot be handled separately, adding that there would be no Naver, Amazon and Google without the dotcom bubble.