이 기사는 2022년 05월 25일 08:10 더벨 유료페이지에 표출된 기사입니다.

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinone is focusing on coin staking services as it seeks to improve its financial performance.

Coinone made revenue of 12.3 billion won ($9.7 million) in the first three months of 2022, down almost 25% from a year ago, according to the latest quarterly financial report released by Com2us Holdings, a major shareholder in the crypto exchange. Net profit also dropped to about 700 million won.

Coinone recorded 173.5 billion won in revenue in 2021, the largest ever in its history. With strong topline growth, the company hired additional people earlier this year and moved its headquarters to a bigger office. However, the struggling crypto market negatively affected the exchange’s revenue in the first quarter.

Coinone’s assets and liabilities increased to 531 billion won and 385.6 billion won, respectively, at the end of March. It is believed users’ deposit for trading accounted for over half of the company’s liabilities.

Coinone is the only company among the country’s top four crypto exchanges that is not expanding the business beyond crypto transactions. Dunamu, which operates Upbit, launched a metaverse platform and a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. Bithumb entered the metaverse through its subsidiary. Korbit is collaborating with SK Group on blockchain technology and also runs an NFT marketplace.

Cha Myung-hun, chief executive of Coinone, has several times expressed his intention to focus on the exchange business. Based on this, many industry experts think Coinone’s crypto staking service, Plus, could be a breakthrough for the company’s weakening financial performance.

Coinone’s Plus allows users to earn interest on crypto assets. It has two types of offerings: Daily and Staking. The Daily type offers interest rates in the 1% range and users can freely withdraw their crypto assets at any time. In contrast, with the Staking type, users need to wait for up to a month to withdraw their cryptocurrency from staking, but instead they can earn interest rates ranging from 4% to 8%.

Plus’ users exceeded 76,869 in the first quarter, up 72% from a year earlier, Coinone said. Especially, users of the Daily type sharply increased as long-term crypto investors opted to stake their coins for interest income rather than selling amid volatility in the crypto market.

“We are working on new services that will create more connected experience on our trading platform,” an official at Coinone said. “Our goal is to become a comprehensive blockchain platform.” (Reporting by Yun-ju Roh)