Ethereum founder expects crypto payments to become prevalent soon

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a speech during the Korea Blockchain Week 2022 at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas, Monday. The annual event will last for two days both in Seoul and Busan. Yonhap

Crypto moguls share blockchain outlook at Asia's largest fair

By Lee Min-hyung

Cryptocurrency moguls here and abroad shared their vision on blockchain technology during Asia's largest fair which kicked off its two-day run in Seoul, Monday.

The Korea Blockchain Week 2022, co-hosted by FactBlock and Hashed, is an annual event that has taken place since 2018. For this year, a group of crypto magnates, such as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, joined the fair and expressed their ideas on the future of blockchain.

Leaders and officials from game, venture capital firms and blockchain-centered platform operators ― such as non-fungible tokens (NFT) ― brought up a broad range of topics on the next big things regarding blockchain.

The Ethereum blockchain founder delivered a keynote speech and shared its next mainstream growth strategy. He expects more people to make payments with Ethereum in their daily lives within the next two to three years.

Ethereum is in the final phase of an upgrade known as "the Merge" through which it will change its system into a more environment-friendly proof-of-stake mechanism.

"Your accounts can be much smarter (after the Merge upgrade scheduled in September)," Buterin, who last visited Korea three years ago, said during the event. Ethereum Foundation has laid out a plan for the Merge to be soft launched by Sept. 19.

The Ethereum founder also expected its transactional commission to drop by a huge margin after the much-anticipated system upgrade.

This will improve the expandability of Ethereum, and allow more people to make payments with the cryptocurrency in their daily lives, he stressed.

Buterin's speech was followed by Klaytn Foundation leader Seo Sang-min who discussed the technology layer of the future metaverse world.

A group of blockchain industry leaders and partners at Hashed also delivered their viewpoint on how blockchain-centered tech paradigms will reshape the world of finance in the Web 3.0 era.

Korea's ranking government officials pledged to join hands with the industry for the nation's leap forward in digital finance.

"We cannot improve the city's standing and competitiveness without the digital finance business," Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said. "The city government is mapping out multilateral policies to attract more international financial institutions. State-of-the-art technologies based on digitalization and data will reshape our daily lives. We will gain insight from blockchain week, and use it as a crucial momentum for the city's growth in digital finance."

Financial Services Commission (FSC)'s standing commissioner Park Jung-hoon placed his focus on ensuring security while the country sets up a legal foundation to embrace the new paradigm of digital finance.

"The authority will secure consistency with overseas counterparts when introducing regulations on digital assets, as they have such characteristics as decentralization, anonymity and transnationality," Park said while attending the event on behalf of FSC Chairman Kim Joo-hyun.

"Before enacting laws on digital assets, we will also do our utmost in ensuring investor protection by stepping up our supervisory roles," Park said.

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