South Korea is one of few countries in the world that is very forward in digital money and cryptocurrency technologies. There are many startups of the kind in the country. And above all of those startups is Upbit.

The third biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world
Upbit is a relatively young company. It had only been exist for about two years. But with a giant backup and study partnership, it rose to the number one in the country. Globally, it ranked third in the April Market Surveillance Report per Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI), April 2019.
Chi-hyung Song, formerly Co-CEO of Kakao Corp, founded Upbit at October 2017. The company is registered under Dunamu, a child company of Kakao Corp.
Dunamu was initially a news aggregator that switched to a fintech company. The change brought it an alliance with Kakao Corp. Together, they launched Kakao Stock, a mobile stock trading app with more than 300,000 users.
Since its’ launching, Upbit has been a dark horse in the industry. Within 3 months, it soared up as the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the country. And the market ranks among the top three in Bitcoin trading. The company scored around $5 billion in 2019.
The company started to expand to Southeast Asian market in late 2018. It launched its services in Singapore on October. Three months later, Indonesia became the second Southeast Asian country having its’ services.
In December 2018, the company became the first cyptocurrency exchange in the world to receive certifications from Korea Internet and Security Agency. The certifications were for ISMS and ISO for information security, cloud security and cloud privacy.
Upbit Developer Conference
Last year, Upbit hosted the first Upbit Developer Conference (UDC) in Jeju Island. South Korea. For two days from 13th to 14th September, it attracted 1,600 attendees. Global blockchain experts such as Da Hongfei from NEO, Li Jun from Ontology and Daniel Shin from Terra also participated as speakers.
The conference is not just a place for blockchain figures to meet up. But it also an event to introduce blockchain and cryptocurrencies to common people. There are exhibitions, meet up, hands-on, and other activities served for attendees.
This year’s UDC is coming at September 2019. Rather than in Jeju Island like last year, it moved to Incheon. It opened the official homepage on May 8th 2019.