Chainlink Brings FX Rates Data From Top Korean Banks to DeFi

Chainlink (LINK) is integrating with CenterPrime to bring a foreign exchange, or FX, rate data feed from the Korean banks to the DeFi space.

“A breakthrough for Korean fintech industry”

CenterPrime, a Hyperledger based project, has access to the Korean open banking API that streams FX rate data from several local banks. According to CenterPrime’s press release, this is a major milestone for the Korean fintech space. They noted:

“This integration with Chainlink marks a major breakthrough for the Korean fintech industry. For the first time in history, applications will be able to access decentralized foreign exchange rates compiled by the best banks in Korea.”

Chainlink data oracles within the DeFi ecosystem. Source: CenterPrime.

Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov speaking at On-Chain Fintech Conference earlier in the day, said that this is an opportunity for banks to participate in the “smart contract revolution”:

“I think banks can participate in the smart contract revolution and Blockchain. And then how they're going to reinvent the global financial system is by the providing of various data, the providing of various services to these financial products.”

A market that dwarfs crypto 100-x

South Korea is one of the world’s largest and most advanced economies. They are home to such tech heavyweights as Samsung and LG, and also have one of the highest rates of crypto adoption in the world.

Having access to the decentralized data from the traditional financial markets, in theory, should greatly expand the DeFi use case base. The daily trading volume in the forex market is $6.6 trillion, it is over 100-times that of the daily cryptocurrency trading volume. If the DeFi space manages to capture even a small portion of this value, this could translate into a positive momentum for the crypto space.