‘Elderly’ South Korean Crypto Fans Brave 30-min Waits at Customer Centers

Tim Alper
Last updated: | 2 min read

South Korean Crypto Fever 2.0 shows no sign of abating – with customers weathering waiting time of 30 minutes or more as queues of wannabe investors wait to get face-to-face service from the crypto exchange Bithumb’s reopened offline center in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam District.

Source: Adobe/skrotov

As previously reported, Bithumb has reopened its service center to deal with in-person inquiries, claiming that an increasing number of older investors wanting to get into crypto preferred to receive guidance from employees on a face-to-face basis. The center had closed temporarily due to coronavirus pandemic-related restrictions.

Floods of older South Koreans have taken up crypto investment in recent months – but one South Korean pensioner recently told Cryptonews.com that most people in their 60s and 70s struggle with the IT solutions required for crypto trading.

Per Maeil Kyungjae, which sent a reporter to the reopened Bithumb center late last week at 1pm, “some 10 to 20 customers” were waiting patiently to see crypto exchange advisors in the customer center, with all counters apparently fully staffed. The journalist claimed “it was hard to find a place to sit” in the center.

The media outlet spoke to a number of customers, one of whom was in his 60s. The man claimed that he had created a Bithumb account several years ago, but had since forgotten his password. As token prices have risen, he stated that he was keen to regain access to his account and restart trading.

Most of the “middle-aged and elderly people at the center,” the newspaper observed, were in similar positions to this individual, and had forgotten their passwords or wanted to deal with personal information-related issues and did not feel they had the tech skills to deal with online or chat app-based help channels.

Another investor in his 60s displayed some shrewd-sounding market knowledge. He stated that his reason for coming to the center was to change the personal information associated with his account, but stated that he was avoiding “crowded” markets for high market capitalization tokens “like ethereum (ETH) and dogecoin (DOGE)” – and instead wanted to focus on building his portfolio of tokens that are “less popular,” and “lower in price.”

Rival trading platform Coinone has also recently reopened a customer center it closed several years ago due to low footfall.
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