IOTA Co-Founder Pledges Focus on Institutional Adoption in Korea Through ETFs, Custody, and More

• Dominik Schiener has pledged to focus on pushing for institutional adoption of IOTA, including ETFs and custody solutions, buoyed by the spike in interest from South Korea.
• Dom shared that since Rebased launched, investors in the US have had a 180-degree turn in interest and believe that IOTA can now aptly compete with SUI and Aptos.

Since IOTA launched Rebased, there has been a spike in interest in the blockchain network, both from an investors’ and developers’ perspective. Founder Dominik Schiener has now pledged to ride on this interest to push the network’s adoption by institutional players, encouraged by surging support from the South Korean market.

In an online exchange with some IOTA enthusiasts, Dom showed appreciation for the support that Korean investors have shown to the network in recent times, adding:

I will personally dedicate majority of my time on the institutional adoption of IOTA. It is about time that we get more structured products, ETPs, ETFs, regulated custody solutions, exchanges and institutional onramps.

Indeed, interest in IOTA has spiked over recent weeks. Trading volume is now exceeding $2 billion daily, a parabolic rise from an average of $10 million just a month ago. Data shows that Koreans are firmly behind his rise: in the past 24 hours, Upbit, the largest exchange in Korea, processed $1.374 billion worth of IOTA trading volume, which accounted for 62% of all the token’s volume in that period.

IOTA’s Time to Take Over

A look at the price charts, discussions on social media, and news headlines all point to one inevitable truth: IOTA has reawakened. The blockchain network has been sidelined for years, but it’s finally back in the spotlight.

The price charts have been nothing short of jaw-dropping. The token has gained 30% in the past day alone to trade at $0.586 and push its market cap past the $2 billion mark. This makes IOTA the 64th largest crypto in the market at press time, ranking higher than shinier new crypto projects like Lido DAO, The Sandbox, Brett, and Binance’s First Digital USD. The token set an intra-day high of $0.626, its highest price since April 2022.

As impressive as the price rise has been since November, IOTA’s biggest advancements have been in its technology and adoption. On the tech front, the Rebased upgrade has changed the game for IOTA, making it one of the most complete networks on which to deploy dApps. As we reported, Rebased ushers the network into a new era where tokenization will be at the heart of its development (and remember, tokenization is touted to be a $16 trillion opportunity by 2030).

On the adoption front, Dom revealed in a separate interaction with community members that the IOTA Foundation is “already speaking with several investors and funds out of the US. We are in the process of setting up a US tokenized fund structure, and we will continue to work on market adoption efforts there.”

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