Kim Seo-jun, the CEO of blockchain investment firm Hashed, noted at the ‘2025 CHOSUNBIZ Virtual Assets Conference’ held at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the morning of the 16th, that as artificial intelligence (AI) advances and the digital world expands, creating governance systems among governments, corporations, and technology with different interests will become an essential task. He said, “It will be difficult to solve these tasks without blockchain.”
During the conference, Kim gave a keynote speech on the theme ‘Governments rule the physical world, and blockchain governs the digital world.’ He stated, “As the digital world expands, our lives, including assets, have changed greatly in many areas,” adding, “Cash has transformed into digital numbers, and various identity information is managed digitally instead of with identification cards.” He also mentioned, “Human interactions are also taking place increasingly in the digital world, like in the metaverse.”
Kim emphasized that the expansion of the digital world is not only positive. A few big tech corporations have seized control of the digital territory, and AI is also developing in a biased direction influenced by the needs of specific corporations or capital.
He said, “The data we use is monopolized and utilized by a few big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook,” adding, “As a result, American consumers have increasingly shown a tendency to oppose the use of their data by specific corporations.”
He further questioned, “Is AI really fair?” pointing out, “OpenAI is not an open company at all. Concerns have grown over whether OpenAI has clear philosophies and directions and whether its governance is transparent.”
Kim stressed the need to return to the transparent protocol system created during the inception of the internet to prevent the monopoly of specific capitals in the digital world and to establish desirable governance. He explained that Bitcoin is the first protocol-based network economic organization created by humanity.
He noted, “Bitcoin is not an asset issued by corporations, so there is naturally no representative or CEO,” adding that it operates as a transparent network without boundaries on participation, allowing assets to be retained independently without financial institutions.
Kim explained that while there were concerns in the past about Bitcoin being an ‘anarchist’ that disrupts state systems, it is now being recognized as a means to improve practical issues and collaborate with governments. In fact, Donald Trump, who won the U.S. presidential election last November, had promised to make Bitcoin a new national strategic asset.
Kim also predicted that the application of blockchain in areas like asset storage and investment would expand rapidly in the future. He said, “For example, trading overseas real estate requires a lot of processes and is difficult for the average person to access, but in the blockchain system, it will be possible to easily invest in fragments as if buying and selling coins.”