Director of SK Group, South Korea's third largest chaebol

SK Group, established in 1953, is the third largest consortium in South Korea. The group is composed of more than 120 subsidiaries and shares the company's brand and business culture. The group’s largest business is mainly in the chemical, petroleum and energy industries. SK Group also owns Korea’s largest telecommunications service provider, SK Telecom. In 2012, Hynix, the world’s third-largest semiconductor manufacturer, was merged into the group, aiming to expand its business to In the semiconductor industry.

Now, SK Group once again sees the next growth goal, and is actively moving towards it, that is-Metaverse.

The 48-year-old managing director Huh Seok-joon said in an interview with foreign media "Bloomberg" today (13) that SK Square Co., the investment arm of the SK Group, broke away from the parent company last month and split into independent equity. And hope that every investment portfolio has a Metaverse company.

Huh went on to say that customers should be able to use cryptocurrency and the Metaverse community for shopping, streaming and other transactions in the future. Companies from all over the world are betting on Metaverse, a virtual environment that can replace web browsers, mobile applications and allow users to interact with other people through the Internet.

SK Square is taking swift action to prevent and lag behind competitors who are younger and more flexible than us: our business needs to be transformed into Metaverse, the new interface between customers should shift from mobile phones to Metaverse, and our platform will also use new Of tokens.

Huh also pointed out that this field is very crowded, because foreign competitors include Facebook parent company Meta; domestic competitors also include Naver Corp. and Kakao Corp. and other companies.

"Considering technology and technology, the market is still in its infancy. It will take several years for these investments to pay back and realize the vision of Metaverse."

Korbit and token application

SK Square announced on November 29 that it has invested in Korbit, the fourth largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, and acquired 35% of the shares for 90 billion won (75.4 million US dollars), becoming the second largest after game company Nexon holder NXC. shareholder.

Although Korbit's current market share in the Korean market is only about 0.3%, SK Square believes that entering the market at a lower valuation at this time is a good time to truly enter the cryptocurrency business.

According to Statista data, the exchange with the highest market share in South Korea is Upbit, which has a market share of 76%. Data from the Seoul Exchange also shows that the valuation of Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit, is nearly 17 trillion won, which is equivalent to 144. One hundred million U.S. dollars.

Huh said: SK Square’s goal is to list on the Korbit exchange the tokens that can be used to purchase products and obtain services from SK Group companies, starting with one and then expanding; and said that it will eventually be SK Telecom’s The Meta Universe platform issued a token called ifland.

Encryption regulation is severe, but it is not considered a speculative asset

Although SK Square's recent investment is under severe supervision of South Korea's cryptocurrency, dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges have also been closed for this reason. According to previous reports, the South Korean government even threatened to prohibit users from withdrawing funds to wallets that have not undergone KYC (Know Your Customer) from March next year.

At present, the South Korean government has only approved a few major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Korbit, and requires users to register with their real names and conduct transactions through bank accounts.

Huh said: The company is considering investing in foreign cryptocurrency trading companies in order to establish an international currency ecosystem; furthermore, if the local restrictions on direct investment in crypto assets are lifted, it will also consider purchasing cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin. currency.

Finally, Huh also mentioned: I don't think that cryptocurrency itself is a speculative asset. We are aware of the volatility of prices and we do need to proceed with caution, but it does not make sense to exclude cryptocurrencies in investment options.