[Herald Interview] Decoding crypto through charts

The answers are all out there in the charts for Iron Won, who leads Youth Meta, the holding company of crypto trading service operator BlockSquare Seoul.

After a prolonged period of uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market, the crypto winter seems to have come to an end. As market sentiment lightens up, Won has one piece of advice for investors -- to predict market trends by tracking asset movements.

“It is nearly impossible for an average person to approach the crypto market, as it is exposed to extreme price fluctuations,” Won said in an interview with The Korea Herald on Monday.

“The market is led by futures, not spot exchanges, making it even more difficult to predict,” Won said. “It is nearly impossible to beat high-leveraged investments, no matter how many bitcoins you hold.”

According to Won, there are “forces” that dominate the crypto market with bold, premeditated transactions. The only way to beat these forces is to read their movements, processing on-chain data, meaning verified blockchain transactions.

“As the market is operated under distributed ledger technology, we can monitor wallet-to-wallet or wallet-to-exchange transactions. If we keep track of these activities, we can read into the price fluctuations and provide leading indicators of the market.”

BlockSquare Seoul offers crypto charts for investors. Its AI-powered service Goyabot provides market intelligence, reading the price movements of major cryptocurrencies, and suggests the best time to buy and sell. The service has garnered some 15,000 users since it set up a paywall last year.

Taking advantage of the crypto industry, which operates beyond borders, the company has been expanding its business to the overseas market. It operates a total of four overseas branches in Singapore, Hong Kong, the US and the UK. About 70 percent of its users are located outside of Korea, with the largest group coming from Japan.

“The answers are all in the charts. There is no language barrier when it comes to crypto trading,” Won said.

Backed by the growth in the charting service, BlockSquare Seoul is to launch an automatic transaction service next year. Linked to the company’s investment portfolio, the service will automate purchase and sales for investors who are unable to utilize the charts.

The service, in a test trial period for the time being, has been seeing a 10 percent profit on average, Won said. This is relatively higher than the average single-digit profit seen in AI-based investments for the stock market.

“Different from shares, the crypto market does not have limits on price surges or dips, meaning it can generate high risk and high profit. A 10 percent profit is an achievable figure in this industry,” he said.

In recent years, Korea has been working to regulate the prominent virtual asset market. The Act on the Protection of Virtual Asset Users, which aims to regulate unfair transaction activities in the market, is set to take effect in July 2024. The second phase of the act, currently underway, is to regulate players in the industry.

“Some of the cryptocurrencies in the market are made to cause harm to investors. Tight monitoring of the market is necessary,” Won said, welcoming the legislative efforts. However, Won stressed that authorities must have a thorough understanding of the virtual asset market.

Though the company’s service is limited to the crypto trading market for the time being, Won hopes it can grow to provide diverse services related to the blockchain industry, from administrative affairs to banking.

“There will come a time when every aspect of our lives will be connected to blockchain technology. I hope BlockSquare Seoul can play a pivotal role, linking users to services,” he said.