'Bitcoin regulations may stifle innovation'

Eden Partners founder and CEO James Myong-ho Ahn / Courtesy of Eden Partners

Blocchain tech should be promoted: Eden Partners CEO

By Kang Seung-woo

A Korean entrepreneur who created a blockchain platform urged the government to be more cautious in coming up with regulations. Eden Partners founder and CEO James Myong-ho Ahn made the remarks in a recent interview.

In particular, he opposes excessive measures, which may end up choking innovations over the potential-rich blockchain technologies. Amid gambling-like investments of many Koreans in virtual money, the government has even considering banning the exchanges of digital tokens.

Eden Partners made EdenChain, which Ahn says allows companies, public entities and people to use blockchain technology and coins in easy, efficient and affordable ways based on its own token called EdenCoin.

“I want to stress that strict regulations would stifle innovation. Korea may miss all the great opportunities with all-out bans. As with the internet, blockchain technology is another major game changer of today,” Ahn said.

“The Korean government should re-evaluate the potential of blockchain technology and coordinate optimal policies. Up until now, there have been various cases in which our government failed to develop potential industries even with excessive public spending.”

Ahn hopes “the blockchain industry does not become another scapegoat of governmental intervention.”

He said, “This industry is experiencing rapid growth on its own and the Korean government should capitalize on this flow to realize all the potential of blockchain technology.”

The businessman expects any overly stringent regulations will eventually fail because of the prisoner’s dilemma, which explains why two rational individuals cannot cooperate.

With the term, he predicts the world would not collaborate perfectly in controlling bitcoin and alt-coins because countries with few regulations will eventually benefit at the cost of nations with strict rules.

“Small, underdeveloped countries will accumulate larger sums of money compared to medium-sized and large countries once cryptocurrency platforms are legalized. Profit sharing between the two groups of countries will indeed turn out asymmetric,” he said.

“Instead of tightening regulations, the Korean government should consider all possible benefits coming from this prospective industry.”

The Seoul administration’s negative stances on cryptocurrency prompted Ahn to seek initial coin offerings (ICOs) outside the country. He began to raise the funds in London soon through ICOs.

“We wanted to minimize the problems as much as possible for the ICO and at least wanted to avoid closing the business due to inevitable circumstances. Every time I heard news about regulating Korea’s cryptocurrency market, I was left in despair,” he said.

“I really didn’t want to see our ICO plans fall to pieces due to government regulations _ the main reason behind conducting the ICO overseas. Moreover, I wanted to expand beyond our borders, go global with our blockchain business. To summarize, government regulations and overseas businesses were the two main reasons behind preparing for ICOs in foreign countries.”

Ahn noted that EdenChain is designed to deal with current challenges posed to scalability and affordability issues.

“EdenChain builds on a platform-based business model. We provide blockchain and token-related technologies to customers, in return for EdenCoin. Transaction costs and network speed were notably the two biggest challenges inherent in the commonly used blockchain technologies of today,” he said.

“EdenChain works on these problems to provide user-friendly technologies that are actually serviceable.”