Family Ethics in Korean Crypto

New Moral Fabrications

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A few days ago, I had the pleasure of reading @counion’s recent article on the recent activity of Korean institutions in the domain of crypto. Put succinctly, Korean media, government, and financial institutions are taking an aggressive stance against cryptocurrencies, calling for high regulation, shutdowns, and straightforward barred access for the general public. This is nothing new in the world of global FUD but the noteworthy aspect of Korea’s special flavor of FUD is that it is being tied to ethical behavior. There is a more existential debate of whether being involved in volatile markets and taking profits from sudden surges is moral behavior.

@counion’s post takes an interesting approach to this, incensed by the way high-powered individuals and institutions have historically barred average citizens from certain information and activities while enjoying them themselves. The perfect instance is the illegalization of porn while executives fully indulge in prostitution services. Crypto is the same, being dissuaded so that the rich can take the most profits and prevents those ‘lower’ from accruing wealth.

This effect trickles down to the mass public of course and we’re left with a great number of people who have been conditioned to be allergic to the technology with now underlying rationale. Our family and friends, though many of them may be hyper-interested at this point, will most likely be skeptical and dissuasive towards us and our “unethical” use of this technology of digital currency.

I wanted to bring this up, particularly as we enter the new year, to collectively acknowledge the real challenges we’ll face as cryptocurrency inevitably creeps into the general public’s daily imagination. I can attest to @counion’s analysis and summary of Korea’s social attitude towards crypto at the moment and I personally wanted to emphasize one major aspect from my experiences that is critical to me.

Family Values

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I come from a family of dedicated workers. Each member, most women included, had/have day jobs that entailed long hours of grinding work. They took salaries, pursued clients, and worked their way and their businesses up into respectable entities. My maternal grandfather, now in his mid-90s, still has a keen mind for his developments that his sons (my uncles) now manage and my paternal grandmother keeps close tabs on family assets. I could go into each person’s career paths and pick apart their work values, but to generalize things for sake of argument, I can safely say that they all fundamentally believe that compensation comes in return for correlated work that takes in all the usual factors - job type, position, hours worked, leadership ability, etc.

This is where cryptocurrency confounds them. As we all know, there is no employer, no actual ‘source’ of distributed wealth, no paycheck with automated dividends, no security in savings mechanism, and hell, we have no idea how much any of this will be worth in a year, much less when we retire. This, though very exciting for many of us, of course undermines any perception that being involved is a career choice. And I’m sure as I’ve experienced with my family and friend circles, many of you will go up against this barrier.

Adopting a New Mindset

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I know many of us are waiting for adoption for various reasons. Many want widespread use to boost our investment prices, some want to earnestly see a decentralized reality, and a few of us just want to simply say “I told you so” from our Lamborghinis to the people who scoffed at a so-called pyramid scheme.

While all of these sound pretty tempting and potentially satisfying, I’m personally always thinking of how and when the family will embrace me being part of an industry that didn’t even exist a decade ago and how I can effectively prove that this is a viable trajectory for not just the volatile short-term, but the promising long-term.

A big part of Korean culture are the specs. The name-values of where you work, your position, the people you know, and the nature of the work. Adoption doesn’t just mean Bank of America picking it up or your local grocery accepting a bit of LTC, it entails a broader and more deep-rooted adoption of what work means. Hopefully, crypto will establish as a compelling and respected field for many of us whose cultures are not so embracing of these types of developments.

I’m married now with the recent new responsibility of family upkeep. A part of that is my career, inseparable with a mostly misunderstood technology and value system. A great number of my conversations are shifting from “where does the money come from” to “but will this last, is it sustainable?” I expect much of the broader societal inquiry will turn this way as well as crypto has recently transformed from a completely speculative investment to a short-term bull market. We’ll see how the digital chips fall, but I certainly hope that through discourse, we’ll be able to craft that volatility into something really foundational.

Happy New Years everyone, and as always, let me know your thoughts below!