Reportedly, Japan and South Korea are among the top three markets globally, along with the US, for cryptocurrency trades. As of January 2018, nearly one third of global Bitcoin transactions were made with Japanese Yen and South Korea accounted for around 35% of global Ethereum trading.
Large merchants such as Bic Camera and Yamada Denki in Japan and Goto Mall in South Korea are now accepting payments with cryptocurrencies, which is likely to push many more peers to look at accepting cryptocurrency payments.
Moreover, in March 2018, Bithumb, a cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, partnered with Korea Pay Services to enable 6,000 retail outlets across South Korea to accept cryptocurrency payments. Earlier in April 2017, Coincheck, a cryptocurrency exchange in Japan, teamed up with Recruit Lifestyle to roll out its Bitcoin-enabled POS app AirREGI across 260,000 merchant stores in Japan.
A consequence of the continued development of the cryptocurrency market is the considerable interest from regulators in Japan, Australia and South Korea to regulate this market. The new regulatory initiatives are expected to provide a much-needed push to widen the use-case of cryptocurrencies.
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