South Korea is showings what positive intent can do, despite having banned ICOs in the past. The Busan city won the race to become the ‘regulatory sandbox’, pipping the much more popular Jeju Island for this coveted status. Busan will now launch a stable coin to mirror the national currency.

Jeju Island, the paradise for tourists in the region, gets thousands of flights in a year. It is the volcano island, one of the seven natural wonders, and offers amazing waterfalls, natural landscape and sea views. It also hosts the famous female divers who can hold their breath for two minutes while diving deep in the sea.

In the new century, the natural paradise of Jeju is also known as the ‘Bit Island’. The island is autonomous and self-governing, and markets itself as the International Free City — here almost anyone can arrive without a visa and live as a resident. All of this makes for delightful reading. Their vision also matches that of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for a new future with more freedom.

Jeju is not alone in its mission to keep pace with marching technology. Other global cities like Dubai, Liverpool and Belfast also aim to launch their local digital money, just like Busan.

There is always bad news around cryptocurrencies, more so because of their complexities. The long addresses and keys aren’t meant to be remembered, and there is no perfect way to keep these keys safe either. A BBC journalist, Monty Munford, is making news after disclosing that he lost 25K GBP, claiming someone took out his MEW private key he had saved in a Gmail draft.

Gmail draft is a handy way to store important information, or is it? Monty had bought ether in 2017 before the meteoric rise of bitcoin at the end of that year. After the downturn in 2018, he decided to check the wallet, but the ether was amiss. To be sure, Monty is approaching 60, not the right age to dabble in new technologies!

The way cryptocurrencies work, every transaction is irreversible. It’s etched hard on the blockchain rock, or else they wouldn’t be making so much news. Monty approached a US-based hunter of crypto theft and fraud, who traced the missing ether to Binance.

The US firm found out that the stolen ether was split into several chunks, and each sent to several Binance addresses. Now Binance refused to reply to queries until Monty lodged a case at Action Fraud. Binance could only trace the ether to some generic IP address in Holland.

“I’m left with my fingers burned, feeling like I wandered into a savage bazaar where criminals can pick your pocket at will. And get away with it,” says Monty in his BBC report.