🖥️ Russia's Social Media Giant With 500 Million Users Launches It's Own Crypto Asset, an Emerging Trend

On April 1, VK, one of Russia's largest social media platforms with more than 500 million active users according to its publicly available users' catalog, launched an "internal" crypto asset. According to a report by Tass, a local mainstream media outlet in Russia translated by Cointelegraph, VK enables users to mine its crypto asset through mobile devices and various apps on iOS and Android. As of April 4, the crypto asset of VK was used by 4 million users, by around 0.8 percent of the entire user base of the platform.

The launch of VK's own cryptocurrency comes after JPMorgan, the biggest financial institution in the U.S., launched a cryptocurrency called JPMCoin to be used for domestic and international transactions. Following the launch of JPMCoin, Kakao, the most widely utilized messaging, payments, and ride-hailing app in South Korea, developed a private blockchain network called Klaytn with the intent of integrating a cryptocurrency wallet into KakaoTalk. The messaging app has 200 million users and around 48 million users in South Korea, boasting a 93 percent market share.