This Is How South Koreans Are Trading The North Korea Crisis

Something odd is going on in the cryptocurrency world of Ethereum each time a North Korean headline hits the tape…
The price of the cryptocurrency/platform Ethereum has soared in the last two weeks from under $180 to over $300 – massively outperforming its peers. At the same time South Korea’s KOSPI has fallen just 3.5% and the Won dropped just 2.4% as its nuclear neighbor turns up the armageddon amplifier to ’11’.
Goldman explains ‘What Is Ethereum?’
Answer: A Platform 1st, a Cryptocurrency 2nd. Ethereum differs primarily from Bitcoin in the latter is set up to be an alternative to ‘real money’ while the former is more of a platform set up to run any decentralized application and automatically execute ‘smart contracts’ when certain conditions are met. Ethereum offers a digital currency like Bitcoin – called Ether – but this is just one component of its smart contract execution and primarily used to facilitate and reward using the network. However, the rise of Ethereum has not come without setbacks, including the ~$60 million hack of “The DAO”, a venture capitallike organization with the mission of ‘investing’ in Ethereum-related start-ups and projects (and is no longer operational today).
Ethereum’s recent dizzy rise and the catalysts for each volume surge…

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 9, 2017.