Binance to Open Branch in South Korea

Binance, the busiest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, is about to enter the South Korean market, according to Business Korea.

The news was announced by CEO Changpeng Zhao at a speech delivered at an event in Seoul on last weekend.

Time to buy the dip?

Reportedly, the exchange has hired two Koreans to the key roles – Jeon Ah-rim as local marketing director and Choi Hyung-won as director of Binance Lab, its social impact fund. The exchange actually added Korean language support in August 2017, although exchange is not yet particularly popular amongst South Koreans, according to the report.

Binance is always expanding

Binance handles $1.4 billion in daily volumes, according to coinmarketcap.com.

The company was founded in Beijing but moved to Hong Kong just before the Chinese government made cryptocurrency exchanges illegal in the country in September 2017. It subsequently opened offices in Tokyo, Malta and Jersey, and recently signed a partnership with a Ugandan blockchain initiative called Crypto Savanna, with the aim of aiding in the economic development of that impoverished but developing country.

In March the exchange reported having 7.9 million active, registered users, which is notable because that is more than the population of Hong Kong.

In July 2018 Chanpeng said that he expects his company to make $1 billion in net profit this year, and that it has passed 10 million registered users.

In March 2018 hackers attempted to steal money from the exchange, which managed to stop the attackers from getting away with the money and offered a hefty reward for their capture.

Why South Korea? 

South Korea is one of world’s biggest cryptocurrency markets, with millions of South Koreans regularly using cryptocurrency applications on their mobile phones and its biggest exchange handling hundreds of millions of dollars’ in trading daily. This is despite the country’s authorities clamping down heavily on cryptocurrency last year.

Recently this trend of suppression appears to be changing, with new laws written to cover different aspects of the cryptocurrency industry and a branch of the financial watchdog created specifically for blockchain endeavours.

It can be speculated that it is this change in attitude on the part of the government that is attracting Binance to the country.