South Korean blockchain company Streami, today announced that Digital Currency Group (DCG) has made an investment in the company, becoming its second-largest shareholder. DCG also participated in Streami’s pre-series A round in 2016. Streami operates GOPAX, a leading Korean crypto exchange.
Streami co-founder and CEO Junhaeng Lee said, “After observing the Bitfinex hack and China’s cryptocurrency crackdown in 2016, we decided to build the reliable cryptocurrency market infrastructure that South Korea needed, starting with an exchange.”
The investment includes an exclusive regional partnership between Streami and Genesis, a digital asset lender and a DCG subsidiary, to offer flexible and fixed-term savings products. Launched in December 2020, GOFi, a GOPAX cryptocurrency savings product, already has the most user deposits in the region exceeding $600MM, and is expected to grow further with the aid of Genesis’ deep liquidity pool.
Since its launch in 2017, GOPAX has become a leader in compliance and security. It was the first crypto exchange in the world to acquire the ISO/IEC 27001 certification and the K-ISMS certification, which is a key criterion to become a South Korean registered Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP).
Moreover, in 2018, when government regulators took legal action to punish unscrupulous market participants, Streami led a coalition of crypto companies, investors, and technologists that persuaded the government to adopt sensible regulations instead of outright bans. In setting the standard on compliance and security, Streami became the only crypto company to be awarded an official commendation from the Ministry of Science and ICT in 2020.
