South Korea is pumping $186 million into its metaverse

The Ministry of Information Technology, Science and Future Planning in South Korea has very ambitious plans for the Metaverse. The agency has pledged the equivalent of $186.7 million to create a comprehensive Metaverse ecosystem. Loud an official announcement is about promoting the growth of digital content and related businesses in the country.

The funds will go towards the realization of four main goals to create an all-encompassing Metaverse ecosystem named Expanded Virtual World to accomplish. The government agency intends to use its Metaverse as a platform for expanding virtual industrial growth of cities, education and media. Content creators are supported on multiple fronts to attract the right talent to build the platform. The ministry said it will host community-focused creative activities, a Metaverse developer competition, and a hackathon.

In January, the South Korean Ministry of Science announced a five-year strategy. It aims to make the country one of the top five Metaverse nations in the world. The attractiveness for local corporations, celebrities and investors should increase. Simon Kim, CEO of Hashed, loudly dismissed Cointelegraph notes that the new Metaverse platform places a special emphasis on driving commercial expansion by offering financial support to participants.

In his opinion, government funding poses little of an issue as the private sector is also actively investing in the Metaverse market. However, he puts forward a different argument:

It is the issue of regulation that the government should pay more attention to. In Korea, publishing of NFT games is prohibited and token issuance is also prohibited.

Indeed, crypto exchanges are having a tough time in South Korea and many regulatory issues remain. The country originally wanted to introduce a crypto tax earlier this year. This project has now been postponed to 2023.