Freedom of Using Virtual Money Rather than Regulation

            The Korean government announced, in conference considering virtual money, that all kinds of ICOs will be banned. This prohibition act is caused by domestic fraud cases using virtual money. However, the one-sided restriction of the government can’t help put out the embers of development in the virtual money market. Even though there are some examples about the misuse of virtual money, we should not overlook the positive side of technological development that virtual money will bring.

           First, development of industry-based block chain technology can be decreased. What is block chain? It is called as “distributed ledger,” and through block chain, all of the participants in a transaction can see the account book, and they can also save and manage their account book on their own equipment. Block chain is the main technology allocating reliability for transactions on networks. Many domestic projects using block chain have been given donations by issuing new coins (ICOs). Nowadays, lots of block chain technologies are tested to apply in various fields beyond virtual money. Like this, many businesses now have interests in block chain. For example, in the case of the Korean Electric Power Corporation, they are testing revitalizing “electric power transactions between neighbors” through block chain technology. However, if there is a restriction to ICOs made by the government, developers who have plans to make innovative programs using block chain could not make donations in the virtual money system, ICO. Therefore, the technology market now in growth might be neutralized.
           Second, lots of other countries haven’t regulated completely in regards to virtual money. The Korean government banned ICOs, which is method for making funds through virtual money. In the cases of Singapore and Hong Kong, their governments announced that ICO use after a stock issue will be regulated under their security laws. The U.S. government also decided to apply the issue of ICOs to its security law as well. Actually, these countries just punish wrong examples under the law, while they still try to protect existing industries that used ICO systems. Therefore, whether ICOs are completely banned or not can bring about marked differences among lots of countries regrading improvement of technology.
           Third, the banning of ICOs can cause an outflow of domestic capital abroad. Through the example of China, which completely banned ICOs before the Korean government, we can easily understand the influence of the complete ban. For a long time, the volume of capital in China had ranked in fourth place in the world. However, after the ban of transactions in virtual money in China, capital transactions in China came to move to other nearby countries. According to statistics sites about virtual money including “Crypto-compare” and ”Coin-market-cap,” a considerable volume of Bitcoin and Ether (two kinds of virtual money )  moved from China to Japan. Korean volume of these virtual currencies also has a considerable influence. Korea ranked in 3rd place following Japan and the U.S. in the case of bitcoin. Also, in ether, Korea accounted for 40 percent and ranked in 2nd place following the U.S. For that reason, if the complete ban of virtual money is enforced, we will also be faced with a result similar to China.
           Virtual money is basically an output created with technological development. If we didn’t know well about changes in recent economies and technologies and still tried to prevent side effects and loses, we couldn’t develop anymore. Also, we could be one step behind in a wind of technological change in the world. It is time that we need to have a realistic understanding. 
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