South Korea's two tech giants compete for the Korean won stablecoin: Naver's acquisition of Upbit takes the lead, while Kakao targets the K-pop fan economy.

[Coin World] Two South Korean tech giants are set to compete head-on in the stablecoin arena.

Naver and Kakao have both set their sights on the lucrative Korean won stablecoin market. Naver is making moves faster — they have directly acquired Upbit. This is not just casually buying an exchange; they are employing a combination of strategies: Naver Pay's payment capabilities + Upbit's trading platform + Dunamu's Giwachain blockchain, bringing together the three components.

Their stablecoin is likely to run on Giwachain, first testing the waters on their own shopping and webcomic platform, and later planning to integrate it into CHZZK video services and the Zepeto metaverse. It's worth noting that Upbit has a user base of 10 million, with a daily trading volume of 1.8 billion USD, which is a sufficiently deep pool of traffic.

Kakao's approach is quite different. They have KakaoTalk, a chat tool (with over 49 million monthly active users), and Kakao Bank, primarily targeting the K-pop fan economy. I've heard they're also considering acquiring Coinone exchange—looks like they want to replicate Naver's “payment + exchange” model.

In simple terms, both giants have realized that stablecoins are not the goal; the payment scenarios and user ecosystems connected behind them are what truly matter. Whoever can establish the infrastructure first will seize the ticket to Korea's Web3 payment.