Teary-eyed Wemade's Jang Hyun-guk: "Wemix Delisting Is Upbit's Super Bullying"

Jang Hyun-guk, CEO of Wemade, is being interviewed on the 3rd at Wemade headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. / Seongnam - Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] Jang Hyun-guk, CEO of Wemade, strongly expressed dissatisfaction regarding the decision by South Korea’s top five cryptocurrency exchanges to delist WEMIX, calling it "Upbit’s super power abuse."

At an online press conference held on the 25th, CEO Jang said, "Upbit is the only exchange to which we submitted a distribution plan," adding, "I think it is very unfair that such a thing has happened."

CEO Jang gave three reasons for calling Upbit’s actions "super power abuse." First, the exchange did not provide guidelines regarding the circulating supply. He said, "We requested guidelines on what Upbit defines as circulating supply and how it should be managed, but they have not provided any to this day."

He continued, "If they had presented clear standards and WEMIX failed to meet them, resulting in this action, we could accept it. But since there are no standards and they did not explain what we failed to meet, yet unilaterally notified us of the termination of trading support, I consider this an abuse of power."

Secondly, he criticized the lack of transparency in the delisting discussion process and outcome. He said, "We communicated several times through DAXA (Digital Asset Exchange Joint Council), but we only learned about the termination of trading support on the 24th through Upbit’s announcement. Upbit still has not officially explained that WEMIX trading support has ended or the reasons behind it."

The third reason is "unfairness." CEO Jang stated, "As everyone knows, the issue started with the difference between the distribution plan and the circulating supply. Even now, if you check coins on Upbit, there are countless coins without a distribution plan," adding, "This is an important variable that should warrant termination of trading support. However, coins without a distribution plan are still being circulated. The standards applied to WEMIX are not being applied to other coins."

During the explanation of the unfairness of the exchange’s decision to end trading, CEO Jang appeared briefly choked up.

Regarding criticism that his previous assertion of "there will be no delisting" may have provoked the delisting, he said, "If the decision to end trading was made out of anger because I said that, that itself is a serious problem," adding, "No matter how angry you are, the exchange should act fairly and make impartial judgments."

CEO Jang stated that the delisting of WEMIX will have no impact on future business development. He said, "Our business focus has long shifted globally, so whether WEMIX is traded domestically will have limited impact on our business," adding, "Discussions about listing on overseas exchanges are progressing smoothly, and the originally planned onboarding of games onto the WEMIX platform, such as the CBT of Mir M Global and the release of casual games by Wemade Play, will not be affected."

He also reiterated his intention to file an injunction against the exchange’s delisting decision as a means of contesting it. CEO Jang said, "We have completely resolved the WEMIX circulating supply issue, and WEMIX is currently being circulated according to the distribution plan submitted to Upbit," adding, "Since this is an important matter, we are preparing the injunction application as quickly as possible."

Meanwhile, the day before, DAXA, the digital asset joint council composed of Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax, held a meeting and decided to end WEMIX trading support. Accordingly, WEMIX will no longer be tradable on these exchanges starting at 3 p.m. on the 8th of next month.