According to recent reports, South Korea’s interest in blockchain technology is peaking, granted that the government has recently decided to allocate a total of $880 million towards the development of innovative technologies, such as blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence.

In a government press release, it was stated that the deputy Prime Minister, Kim Dong Yeon, held a ministerial meeting on the 13th of August, to discuss the country’s investment plans in innovative technologies for the following five years.

Despite the risks associated with Initial Coin Offerings, the trend has become extremely popular in areas throughout the world. In an effort to reduce the risk of fraud, money laundering and tax avoidance, several countries have banned ICOs.

South Korea was one of these, as the Financial Services Commission, a government department in-charge with financial policies and supervision, banned domestic ICOs in September 2017. Now, recent reports indicate that the South Korean National Assembly has proposed the idea of lifting the ban placed on domestic ICOs.

Leaving aside the massive growth in value for Bitcoin in 2017, the digital currency is off to a rocky start in 2018. This is mostly due to increased volatility, given the end of the holiday season, alongside with several world events, with direct consequences in the bitcoin price.

Therefore, on the 9th of January, the bitcoin price plunged by roughly 13.5%, which is approximately $2,000, following news that South Korea is actively planning to ban digital currency trading within the country.

During the last couple of months, South Korea’s attitude on bitcoin and other digital currencies has begun to change, and recent reports now indicate that the country is considering new regulation. Before anything else, it is important to point out the fact that following China’s ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges, numerous companies affected moved abroad to countries such as South Korea and Japan, where regulation was more lenient.

However, according to recent reports, there have been several proposals in South Korea, meant to prevent those who are underage from opening accounts on digital currency exchanges, while also taxing capital gains made from trading.

In a short period of time, Ethereum has managed to gain a lot of popularity on the digital currency market, with millions of dollars-worth of investments being poured into the new, trustless, smart contracts technology, which has a huge potential to further revolutionize the way we transmit data of all kinds, and the security behind it.

The last couple of months have brought forward a couple of growths and decreases in value, so this article will focus on some of today’s main factors that will further encourage Ethereum development, adoption and popularity. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin, has recently mentioned that: “I would say that Ethereum’s main benefits are in its generality and in its utility to many kinds of industries. There are applications in finance, identity, supply chain tracking, health care, energy and many other areas. This is a result of Ethereum deliberately being designed as a general-purpose programming platform.”

During the last couple of years, the state of bitcoin in South Korea was quite unclear, due to a set of laws that cannot be easily interpreted. Yet, this is about to change, as the South Korean Government is trying to break its rigid financial laws, and come up with better ones, suited for the financial environment that we live in.

With this in mind, the Chairman of the South Korean Financial Services Commission, also known as the FSC, recently carried out a presentation, introducing a project named ‘The FinTech Development Roadmap’. With this in mind, this development roadmap is supposed to remove all of the irrational regulations present in the legislative framework, but also find ways to change up and revamp the systems being currently used, in order to make more room for the FinTech technology that will soon hit the market.