“As people become beings that do not have to reproduce anymore, spaces for economic activities will gradually move towards a virtual world and the Metaverse. In order to create a new civilization in a virtual world and build trust towards the civilization, ‘protocol’ that never changes needs to exist in a virtual world.”
At a breakfast meeting of ‘Korea IT Leaders Forum’ that was held on Tuesday at the JW Marriott Hotel in Seocho-gu, CEO Kim Seo-jun of Hashed made a prediction that the structure of the ‘protocol economy’ that guarantees transparency and fairness based on rules will gain more competitive edge than centralized economy and platform-based economy and the protocol economy will grow based on virtual world where virtual assets are utilized.
CEO Kim defined the protocol economy as a global economy that is made up of rule-based programs. The protocol economy is a new type of an economic model that connects many economic units through decentralization and it is centered on technologies such as blockchain.
Bitcoin is a prime example that proves competitive edge of the protocol economy. CEO Kim explained that Bitcoin is the mankind’s first protocol-based network economic structure.
“Through blockchain-based network, Bitcoin has showed that an economic structure can grow as an open co-operative without a central group.” said CEO Kim. “The reason why Bitcoin is making such a rapid growth is because the global economy is slowly breaking down.”
He gave an analysis by saying that while global financial authorities were able to overcome financial crisis in the past by printing more paper monies, the global economy was followed with side-effects from an increase in liquidity provision. Just like how people purchase gold to guarantee value of their assets safely, he predicted that such expectation will shift towards virtual currencies.
Level of interest towards Bitcoin has been rising gradually. Global banks have begun to participate in a virtual currency ecosystem by opening up Bitcoin accounts. Global mobile payment companies such as PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Google Pay, and Apple Pay have also set their foot into the virtual currency network. CEO Kim predicted that most of banks in South Korea will open up virtual currency accounts by next year.
“Bitcoin represents digital assets (tokens), and the digital asset market will make a gradual growth.” said CEO Kim. “In addition to paper money, traditional assets such as real estate and stocks and other fields such as talent and information are also shifting towards digital assets.”
CEO Kim also said that virtual economies that are not based on blockchain but based on digital assets are already making an explosive growth and gave video games such as Minecraft and Roblox, a virtual reality platform called Fortnite, and a non-fungible token-base digital art as examples.
“Next ten years will involve human civilization’s biggest and most important changes and there will be values made in a new continent called a virtual world.” said Kim. He also said that innovative cases will take place within various Metaverses through digital assets.
Staff Reporter An, Hocheon | hcan@etnews.com