Kakao Messenger Scoping For Partners In Blockchain Services For Its Ground X Corp

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Ground X Corp,the blockchain Kakao startup is in the market ,hunting for established blockchain players who will fund its growth in Asia. For this purpose, it is seeking out consumer-service companies to build capital and business alliances.
Kakao is a South Korean messenger app with over 50 million users each month and is exploring avenues to enter new business overseas.
Strategic Move
The latest private offering by Kakao, is a double-edged strategic move for the operator. The offering will allow it to seek out partners to fund its journey into the new strata of financial technology – blockchain. More importantly, Kakao wants its new funding partners to operate on a crypto platform, so as to facilitate Ground X growth in this platform.
According to the CEO, Jason Han, it is interested in companies which have a similar profile as Kakao, offering mobile and internet services for blockchain platform. However, these services are expected to change as per market necessities.
The company envisions the use of social networking services or blogging services like Steemit and payment for them with cryptocurrency. They have positioned themselves for content aggregation and independent publication by writers for the blockchain platform.
Better than Ethereum
The company will be more friendly than Ethereum, says Han “We’re going to create a service that people can use without having to learn the language of crypto.”
He says that, “The biggest problem with blockchain right now is that there isn’t a single service that an average person would use.” This is the primary area where Ground X is going to be different, he says. The services offered by his company will be more practical and built for better user experience.
The Ethereum Foundation is yet to respond to Hans comments.
KakaoTalk in 2010 has grown to $7.6 billion providing gaming, commerce and networking for millions of users. It has successfully cracked other markets such as Japan with its manga-app called Piccoma.
As of the present, Hans does not expect to move the current Ground X app to blockchain platform, despite Kakao being one of the better placed blockchain. More importantly, the South Korean major will look to start its blockchain capabilities not in its native country but overseas, in Japan.
Japan-based Ground X venture
One of the reasons for the company exploring overseas partners is to ease the transit away from the uncertainty in regulations in South Korea itself. The guidelines and the rules by which bitcoin or other alternate currencies can operate in the country are constant under threat.
The latest of these being South Korean’s insurers hesitating to provide coverage for these coins given the high risk factors and the government’s non-supportive stance. Besides, banks are allowing only valid crypto accounts to operate and alias accounts being suspended.
As the rules are changed time and again by the regulatory authorities, users are affected. Thus, companies such as Ground X are intent on moving to more stable and proactive environments such as Japan where, as Han says, “We’d like to see some clarity.”