Time now for our "Life & Info" segment... where we focus on information useful for your everyday life whether you are in Korea or somewhere else in the world.<br />Today, we are going to discuss cryptocurrencies. <br />You've probably heard of Bitcoin, you might have heard of Ethereum,... but there are now thousands and thousands of them that you almost certainly haven't heard of -- some good, some bad, and some downright awful.<br />Bitcoin prices surpassed 5-thousand U.S. dollars recently...jumping to a five-month high.<br />We have our business correspondent Kim Hyesung in the studio.<br />So Hyesung, some of these virtual currencies are already being used in some of our day to day transactions. Tell us more. <br />Yeah Mark, it's cyrpto time. A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that works peer-to-peer, enabling direct payments between individuals instead of having a bank as a third party.<br />Bitcoin, which created global phenomenon back in 2017 with prices skyrocketing to 20-thousand U.S. dollars, is one example.<br />Bitcoin prices are now lower than that, at around 5-thousand dollars. But still, cryptocurrencies are held by around three million Koreans, around six percent of total population, mostly those in their 20s and 30s and interestingly, there are a growing number of use cases... as cafes and more companies are accepting them as payment. <br />The footage we are looking at is a cafe in downtown Gangnam that opened last year.<br />Customers can use digital currencies to buy coffee.<br />So americano costs about 4 U.S. dollars, that's zero-point-zero-two-two-five Ethereum when converted into the price of cryptocurrencies in real time.<br />The whole transaction takes less than two minutes. <br />Two minutes may sound like a long time, but it's actually much shorter than the transaction time for credit cards, which takes days to be transferred from party A to party B.<br />"We accept five kinds of cyrptocurrencies, including Ethereum. Compared to credit cards, the remittance fee is much lower, and we plan to introduce more digital currencies into our server system."<br />2. <br />If I had some cryptocurrency, I'd like to try it out and grab a cup of coffee and some cake over a nice spring weekend...<br />Yeah, all you need toi do is to is download a digital wallet app on your smartphone. And it's not just cafes or restaurants, there are now pharmacies and gas stations in Korea that accept cryptocurrencies. <br />According to CoinDuck, over hundred places across Korea accept Ethereum as a digital currency.<br />Using Coinmap, users can also look for places that accept Bitcoin. <br />Going online....Shinsegae Duty Free Shop started accepting digital currencies last month.<br />Travel website Expedia also accepts cryptocurrencies. <br />And guess what, Samsung Electronics has included a cryptocurrency wallet, called the Samsung Blockchain Wallet, in its new flagship phone, the Galaxy S10. <br />The wallet has its own blockchain keystore that enhances security....and lets owners store and make payments using digital currencies...basica
