Kakao’s Klay Cryptocurrency to Make First Exchange Listing

South Korean messaging giant Kakao’s “klay” token – the native cryptocurrency of its recently launched Klaytn blockchain – is soon make its first official exchange listing on Upbit’s platform.

Ground X, the firm set up by Kakao to develop the Klaytn network, announced the news in a Medium post on Sept. 5, saying klay will list on Upbit’s Singapore and Indonesia platforms by the end of this month.

Upbit Singapore revealed on Sept. 6 that klay will be listed following price discovery via a Dutch auction – in which the price is reduced until buyers are found – on Sept. 18.

The auction will run for 12 hours, or until a yet-to-be-determined hard cap is hit. Subsequently, successful bidders will receive their klays on Sept. 19. A klay/bitcoin trading pair will be enabled at a future date.

The exchange added that Upbit and Klaytn won’t profit from the auction and Upbit will “redistribute all proceeds” to users in the future.

Kakao has not responded to questions from CoinDesk regarding how it plans to redistribute the proceeds and how much klay cryptocurrency it will make available for the auction. The exchange did say a total of 10 billion klay will be distributed through to 2021 in monthly tranches ranging from 29 million to 278 million tokens.

The news that Upbit is the first platform to list Klay is perhaps not surprising given the close association of the two entities. Headquartered in South Korea, Upbit is a crypto exchange operated by Dunamu, a firm backed by Kakao.

In its announcement, Upbit said that in a private sale in December 2018, Klay was priced at $0.03 per unit. Later, in April 2019, a private sale saw the cryptocurrency reach $0.08 apiece. Ground X reportedly raised $90 million in a private coin offering this spring.

It may seem unexpected that klay is launching in Singapore and Indonesia first, and not in the home nation of both Upbit and kakao. However, the listing announcement follows press reports suggesting that klay would have trouble listing in South Korea, where initial coin offerings are forbidden.

Kakao image via Shutterstock