2018-8-28 20:00 |
Korean Development Bank Report Shows North Korea’s Intent To Enter Crypto Industry
Korea Development Bank has issued a recent report that shows local media sources confirming that North Korea has been mining for cryptocurrency. To make this report even more shocking, an exchange platform seems to be in the worlds with a local technology firm, despite the lack of knowledge (and perhaps interest) of the citizens in the country.
This new research report comes from KDB’s research unit, and the compiled information was cited by a news outlet, which wrote, “North Korea appears to have tried to mine cryptocurrencies on a small sale.” This news outlet also wrote, “The KDB unit said that North Korea may have tried to mine bitcoin between May and July last year, but the attempt appears to have been unsuccessful.”
The report also says that the areas of interest that seem to appeal to North Korea the most are the “characteristics of cryptocurrencies, including anonymity, difficulties of tracing money, and cashability.” The news outlet was fairly vague in their findings, though they did say that the firm’s name is Chosun Expo, and their specific work has been to create and sell a platform for market exchanges, centering around Bitcoin transactions.
Cryptocurrency and the entire industry won’t be able to make these changes happen just yet. The KDB unit believes that the lack of infrastructure for blockchain and the electricity required are only a few things that will need to be evaluated and scaled, as needed.
Back in April, a North Korean tourism company announced the soon-coming “creation and release of a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency exclusively for use in the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] tourism industry – the Koryo Coin. The company, which is named Koryo Tours, also said that they plan to launch an initial coin offering (ICO) to ramp up enthusiasm for the coin.
As said above, the public in North Korea have extremely limited knowledge of cryptocurrencies, based on the “recent interviews with North Korean Defectors,” according to the KDB report. The interviews showed that every individual they spoke with “replied that they don’t know about the cryptocurrencies in the North.
Many companies are working globally to bring more information to outsiders about the cryptocurrency industry. The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology offered a course in November 2017, where they discussed blockchain technology, Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency as a whole. Italian Bitcoin entrepreneur Federico Tenga led the course. He told the NK News, “The attendees of the lectures were a mix of computer science and finance students, but sometimes also some of the other professors of the university came to learn about the subject.”
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