❗ Antonopoulos: Harder to Push Crypto Adoption in Regions With Strong Financial Services Like South Korea

At the Deconomy conference held in Seoul, South Korea, cryptocurrency and security researcher Andreas Antonopoulos said that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are currently being actively utilized in regions with poor banking infrastructures and services wherein individuals are pushed to use alternative systems like bitcoin. However, in regions like South Korea wherein fast, instantaneous, and low-fee payment services such as KakaoPay and Samsung Pay are available along with efficient banking services, Antonopoulos suggested that it would take time to develop financial networks equipped with fewer intermediaries to ensure they are more efficient than existing systems. "[Cryptocurrencies] are only being adopted in the places where the pain of the current financial system is so extreme that people are forced to use something that is difficult to understand, difficult to secure, with very poorly designed applications and with very difficult wording,” Antonopoulos said.

According to Pantera Capital, the first billion-dollar cryptocurrency fund, Southeast Asia's biggest cryptocurrency exchange Coins.ph has over 5 million users and 1 out of 10 adults in the Philippines uses the platform to send and receive payments, process bills, and store funds, which is somewhat expected given the impracticality of banking services in the Philippines. Venezuela has also seen an overall increase in bitcoin usage per the data of LocalBitcoins.