Asia's love of Crypto is growing fast, but what are the hurdles that need to be overcome
to get even more investors involved?
Welcome to The Daily Forkast March 2nd, 2022.
I'm Angie Lau.
Editor-in-chief of Forkast, covering all things blockchain.
Well, mainstream interest in crypto is on the rise across Asia, with more than 1 in
10 South Koreans trading with Crypto and almost 1 in 5 wealthy Indians jumping on board.
We're going to take a look at why some people can't get enough of crypto, while others remain
reticent.
It could unlock the key to mass adoption.
All that, plus a whole lot more, including the crisis in Ukraine coming up.
Let's get you up to speed from Asia to the world.
Join thousands of NFT traders who already start their day on Crypto slam.
We begin with the crisis in Ukraine and the latest on the moves from the Crypto world
to support people in the conflict zone.
Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot, has donated US$5 million worth of DOT after the country
expanded fundraising efforts by adding the cryptocurrency to the list of those it's accepting
donations in.
Meanwhile, the Solana Foundation, an ever stake, are collaborating with the Ukrainian
government in setting up a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO named "Aid for Ukraine"
to raise funds directly for civil aid.
However, while Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo
Fedorov, has called for crypto exchanges to freeze addresses linked to Russian politicians
Kraken FX says it cannot freeze accounts without a legal requirement to do so.
And a spokesperson for Binance told CNBC that such a move would actually fly in the face
of the reason why crypto exists.
Still, others are acting, according to a Bloomberg interview, Hong Kong based Animoca is cutting
its service to Russian users and stopping the sale of shares to Russian investors in
response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Minister Fedorov has now tweeted his thanks for the support Ukraine is receiving from
the Crypto community.
Meanwhile, India's super rich are gaining confidence in Crypto, according to local media,
a report by property consulting firm Knight Frank,
18 percent of ultra high net worth Indians have invested in digital assets.
Just in case you are wondering, ultra high net worth individuals are defined as having
investable assets in excess of US$30 million.
Now, 10 percent of them have gone for cryptocurrencies, while 8 percent have chosen to invest in NFTs.
However, some respondents said the volatility of the crypto market is making them reluctant
to invest, while a third said security concerns were holding them back from investing.
Most significantly, over 60 percent say they do not understand the market sufficiently
yet.
Could be that that will change when or if the government clarifies its position on the
legality of crypto in India.
You can find those stories and more at Forkast.News.
Staying on that theme, South Korea's financial regulator has revealed that more than half
of the country's crypto traders are aged in their 30s and 40s.
Now that's an older age group than the two leading candidates in the upcoming presidential
election may have hoped.
So could that hurt their chances at getting the youth vote?
Forkast's Danny Park reports.
South Korea's crypto market has a total capitalization of almost US$46 billion, and an average daily
trade volume of just over US$9 billion.
And some of the findings of the first report from the country's financial intelligence
unit on the crypto market in the country are very interesting.
Among a population of over 51 million, 5.58 million are crypto traders.
That's over one in 10 people.
And while Bitcoin and Ethereum are responsible for 59 percent of investments in the global
cryptocurrency market, Koreans are much less into them, with the two major tokens taking
up just 27 percent of the Won-to-crypto market.
Not only that, Korean crypto traders are older than some might expect.
31 percent of them are in their 30s, while 27 percent are in their 40s and just 23 percent
are in their 20s.
Indeed, the two leading candidates in Korea's presidential election, which is just one week
away, have made promises to promote digital assets in their efforts to captivate the interest
of younger voters.
Those efforts include Democratic candidate Lee Jae-Myung's promise of stronger investor
protection, and People Power's Yoon Suk-Yeol plans for a digital industry promotion agency.
Both are pushing to institutionalize virtual assets.
One expert told Forkast that such campaign moves are vital.
"The fourth industrial revolution will be led online, not offline.
And virtual assets will play a significant role in that.
[The candidates] are sure of that.
When in fact a couple trillion won worth of crypto is being traded,[The candidates] cannot
ignore and neglect [crypto], and thus made such promises."
And even if there aren't as many Crypto investors aged in their 20s as the candidates may have
hoped, they still play a significant role.
The daily trade volume of stocks [in Korea] is about 10 trillion won (about US$8.28 billion).
Comparably, the investors in their 20s and 30s are investing as much in crypto.
We'll be keeping watch for the result of next Wednesday's election.
For Forkast, I'm Danny Park.
And finally, today, hackers behind a data breach on chipmaker Nvidia have threatened
to release a driver that unlocks mining limitations on the company's graphics cards.
Forkast's Timmy Shen has more.
The hacking group Lapsus$ allegedly stole 1 terabyte of data from Nvidia's network last
week.
According to PC Magazine.
The group then threatened to release the driver for sale if the chip maker refused to provide
an update that would allow its light hash rate limiter on its graphics processing units,
or GPUs, to be removed.
Nvidia began installing the light hash rate limiter on its GeForce RTX series of GPUs
early last year to make them less desirable to miners.
Demand for the cards outstripped supply at a time, as users found they could be reprogrammed
to mine Crypto, leaving gamers unable to get their hands on them.
The hackers posted their latest demands on Telegram on Wednesday morning Asia time, requesting
Nvidia commit to completely open sourcing their GPU drivers for Windows, Mac OS and
Linux forever.
In the message, the hackers gave Nvidia a deadline of Friday to meet their demands.
According to Bloomberg, and Nvidia has said they do not anticipate any disruption to their
businesses or ability to serve customers as a result of the incident.
Forkast has asked Nvidia for comment, but none had been received by Wednesday afternoon
Asia time.
We'll be keeping a close watch on what happens on Friday.
For Forkast.
I'm Timmy Shen.
And that's The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia.
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I'm Forkast's Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau..
Until the next time.