Share this article
Kakao's Klay Cryptocurrency to Make First Exchange Listing
The "klay" cryptocurrency from messaging app giant Kakao is to make its first official exchange listing on Upbit later this month.
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 11:26 a.m. Published Sep 12, 2019, 11:30 a.m.
Make us preferred on Google
South Korean messaging giant Kakao's "klay" token – the native cryptocurrency of its recently launched Klaytn blockchain – is soon to make its first official exchange listing on Upbit's platform.
Ground X, the firm set up by Kakao to develop the Klaytn network, announced the news in a Medium post on Sept. 5, saying klay will list on Upbit's Singapore and Indonesia platforms by the end of this month.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Upbit Singapore revealed on Sept. 6 that klay will be listed following price discovery via a Dutch auction – in which the price is reduced until buyers are found – on Sept. 18.
The auction will run for 12 hours, or until a yet-to-be-determined hard cap is hit. Subsequently, successful bidders will receive their klays on Sept. 19. A klay/bitcoin trading pair will be enabled at a future date.
The exchange added that Upbit and Klaytn won't profit from the auction and Upbit will "redistribute all proceeds" to users in the future.
Kakao has not responded to questions from CoinDesk regarding how it plans to redistribute the proceeds and how much klay cryptocurrency it will make available for the auction. The exchange did say a total of 10 billion klay will be distributed through to 2021 in monthly tranches ranging from 29 million to 278 million tokens.
The news that Upbit is the first platform to list Klay is perhaps not surprising given the close association of the two entities. Headquartered in South Korea, Upbit is a crypto exchange operated by Dunamu, a firm backed by Kakao.
In its announcement, Upbit said that in a private sale in December 2018, Klay was priced at $0.03 per unit. Later, in April 2019, a private sale saw the cryptocurrency reach $0.08 apiece. Ground X reportedly raised $90 million in a private coin offering this spring.
It may seem unexpected that klay is launching in Singapore and Indonesia first, and not in the home nation of both Upbit and kakao. However, the listing announcement follows press reports suggesting that klay would have trouble listing in South Korea, where initial coin offerings are forbidden.
Kakao image via Shutterstock
More For You
Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
What to know:
Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
More For You
Robinhood CEO says tokenized stocks could prevent another GameStop freeze
Vlad Tenev blamed the trading halt on its app in 2021 on bad infrastructure, a problem that he says tokenization would solve.
What to know:
- Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says the 2021 GameStop trading halt was caused by slow, collateral-intensive settlement infrastructure, rather than bad actors.
- Tenev argues that even the shift from T+2 to T+1 settlement is insufficient in a 24/7 news-and-trading environment, especially for trades executed on Fridays.
- He is pushing to move stocks onto blockchains for real-time settlement, expand Robinhood’s tokenized stock offerings and 24/7 DeFi-style trading, and urge Congress to pass the CLARITY Act to force the SEC to issue rules on tokenized equities.
Top Stories
