Korea Stands Firm On NFT Games; Laos Introduces Crypto Regulations

Transcript

Korea stance on NFT games, has got us talk­ing this week.

Wel­come to The Dai­ly Forkast Novem­ber 22, 2021. I’m Megha Chad­dah of Forkast.News, cov­er­ing all things blockchain.

South Kore­a’s Game Rat­ing and Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee has reit­er­at­ed its ban on NFT games. We’ll take a look at what that means for both devel­op­ers and gamers and a whole lot more com­ing up.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

Let’s kick off with some of the top sto­ries out of Asia today.

Bit­coin min­ing dif­fi­cul­ty has come clos­est to the lev­el it was at just before Chi­na’s clamped down on the min­ing sec­tor and the cryp­to crash that fol­lowed back in May.

The dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el, which is a mea­sure of the com­put­ing pow­er required to mine Bit­coin, dropped four con­sec­u­tive times imme­di­ate­ly after Chi­na inten­si­fied its clampdown.

But accord­ing to data from BTC.com, last week’s adjust­ment saw an increase of almost 5%, the ninth increase in a row. How­ev­er, a slight fall is expect­ed for the next adjustment.

Mean­while, South Kore­a’s Bithumb exchange has crossed the fin­ish line with its com­pli­ance report to the lat­est cryp­to reg­u­la­tions being accept­ed by the coun­try’s Finan­cial Intel­li­gence Unit.

All four of Kore­a’s major cryp­to exchanges, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Kor­bit are offi­cial­ly licensed, hav­ing ful­filled all cri­te­ria of the cryp­to law.

That means that they can oper­ate cash-to-cryp­to ser­vices. The small exchanges, Fly­Bit and GDAC have also been reg­is­tered under the FIU. How­ev­er, as they have not secured a bank part­ner­ship pro­vid­ing users with real name bank accounts, they are lim­it­ed to offer­ing token-to-token ser­vices only.

You can find out more at Forkast.News.

Stay­ing in Korea, NFT games once again the talk of the space.

The chair of the Game Rat­ing and Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee said once again that it can­not allow NFT games. How­ev­er, he added that not all blockchain based games are banned.

Forkast.News Dan­ny Park has more on what that means.

Both blockchain based and play-to-earn, NFT games are glob­al­ly pop­u­lar with South Kore­an devel­op­ers like WeMade see­ing huge success.

It’s play-to-earn game, Mir4 was at num­ber eight on the game’s plat­form, Steam’s most played chart Mon­day after­noon Asia time.

How­ev­er, Kore­an game devel­op­ers are not able to release their NFT games back home as encour­ag­ing spec­u­la­tive behav­ior is banned.

Speak­ing at a debate on NFTs in the Meta­verse future, Kore­a’s Game Rat­ing Com­mit­tee chair­man explained that unless the law restrict­ing spec­u­la­tion has changed, the com­mit­tee will con­tin­ue to ban NFT games that allow in-game earn­ings to be cashed out.

Be that as it may, Kim said, the com­mit­tee will wel­come blockchain based games that steer clear of cash flow and NFTs. But he doubts any such games will be devel­oped as they don’t bring in profit.

One expert told Forkast.News the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions sti­fle growth and should be loos­ened up.

[I think] the law should be par­tial­ly amend­ed to be more recep­tive towards some [of the games]. We call it the reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box, which allows a grace peri­od of 2 to 3 years, and when there’s a prob­lem, the reg­u­la­tors apply a high­er lev­el of control.

Kim says behind Kore­a’s strict pol­i­cy in gam­ing stands a cul­ture where chil­dren’s edu­ca­tion is num­ber one, which makes video games the boss villain.

For Forkast.News, I’m Dan­ny Park.

Over in Laos, the gov­ern­ment has issued new reg­u­la­tions for cryp­to min­ers and exchanges.

The South­east Asian nation says com­pa­nies must be whol­ly Lao owned with a sta­ble finan­cial sta­tus. In addi­tion, they must make a secu­ri­ty deposit of US$5 mil­lion with the Bank of Laos.

Forkast.News Tim­my Shen has more.

As report­ed by the Laot­ian Times, the coun­try’s Min­is­ter of Tech­nol­o­gy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions spec­i­fied, in addi­tion, that min­ing com­pa­nies should use at least 10 megawatts of pow­er under a six year extend­able con­tract with the nation­al elec­tric­i­ty provider.

The new rules also offer perks for cryp­to min­ers, with the gov­ern­ment say­ing it would exempt for­eign trans­mis­sion and import fees for min­ing operations.

List­ing rules for the indus­try come after the coun­try autho­rized six firms to trade and mine cryp­tocur­ren­cies back in Sep­tem­ber. That move end­ed a ban on cryp­to min­ing that had been imposed in 2018.

Accord­ing to World Bank data, Laos is one of the poor­est coun­tries in South­east Asia, with a per capi­ta gross domes­tic prod­uct of just US$2,630 in 2020.

And report from U.S. Depart­ment of Com­merce’s Inter­na­tion­al Trade Admin­is­tra­tion shows that in prac­tice, the Lao econ­o­my is high­ly dol­lar­ized with the cur­ren­cy fre­quent­ly being used for pri­vate trans­ac­tions involv­ing import­ed goods.

Along­side the new reg­u­la­tions, the Cen­tral Bank of Laos is also explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a CBDC hav­ing enlist­ed Soramit­su and blockchain com­pa­ny based in Japan to study the mat­ter back in October.

For Forkast.News, I’m Tim­my Shen.

And that’s The Dai­ly Forkast from our van­tage point right here in Asia. Hit like, hit sub­scribe appre­ci­at­ed always. Help us reach our goal to reach more of you. For more, vis­it Forkast.News, I’m Megha Chad­dah. Until next time.