Publication date: August 28, 2026 · Bitbase Research
Korea Blockchain Week is an annual industry event held in Seoul, owned and produced by FactBlock (팩트블록), a privately held Korean company, and staged in every year since 2018. It is a week rather than a single conference: a two-day main conference sits inside eight or nine days of official side events and city-wide community programming.
The measurement that governs its published record is 연인원 (yeoninwon), cumulative person-times — one person present on both main-conference days is counted twice. Most of the headline figures attached to Korea Blockchain Week are person-times covering those two days, not headcounts covering the week.
For related Bitbase Research on another conference held in Asia, see Bitcoin Asia: Hong Kong's Bitcoin-Only Conference, Editions and Attendance.
What Korea Blockchain Week is
Korea Blockchain Week is a crypto industry event produced in Seoul by FactBlock, which states on the event site that "KBW is owned and produced by FACTBLOCK (FB)®". The organiser's own positioning line is "Asia's Premier Web3 Event". Newstop Korea records eight consecutive years of editions from its founding, with no year skipped.
The property that shapes everything else is that the brand covers three levels, and a figure published at one cannot be read as a figure at another. The outermost is the week. Inside it sits the two-day main conference, where almost every published attendance figure originates. Below both sits the individual event — The Gateway, Micro Seoul, the afterparties.
The naming history of that middle level is what makes it easy to misread. The 2018 main conference was Beyond Blocks Summit Seoul; 2019 was D.FINE; the 2020 edition ran online under a name that could not be verified, beyond confirmation that it was not IMPACT. IMPACT then carried the main conference from 2021 through 2025.
Two corrections attach to that sequence. The IMPACT brand began in 2021, not 2022: Edaily's coverage of KBW 2021 IMPACT describes it as the fourth edition. And the retirement was announced from the stage of the 2025 edition by founder Seonik Jeon (전선익), who said the event would go forward under the single acronym KBW rather than IMPACT, on the logic that CES and MWC operate as single acronyms. That statement was reported by Financial News (파이낸셜뉴스), a publication whose publisher is the event's founder.
Who runs Korea Blockchain Week — and who owns the organizer
FactBlock Inc (팩트블록(주)) is the registered legal entity behind the event, with Park Wi-ik (박위익) as its listed representative, business registration number 5718800913, and a registered address at the ninth floor of 337 Gangnam-daero, Seocho-gu, Seoul.
Named leadership is two people, not three. Seonik Jeon is Founder & Chairman, the official verbatim title being "Founder & Chairman of KBW & FactBlock". In November 2025, after the September edition had taken place, he stepped down as chief executive while retaining the position of inside director (사내이사). Andrew Park took over as chief executive that month, and Andrew Park and Park Wi-ik are the same person: the name reported in English as "Andrew Park, CEO of FactBlock" and the Korean name on the corporate registration carry one career record, from SGI Seoul Guarantee Insurance to Woori Card to the FactBlock post.
Newstop Korea puts FactBlock at approximately 30 employees and 2024 revenue of about 12.2 billion won, roughly US$12.2 million, from Korea Blockchain Week plus blockchain business development, consulting and public relations work.
Co-hosting and naming rights have changed hands three times. The 2018 edition was co-hosted by three parties, FactBlock, Hashed and Beyond Blocks; Hashed then co-hosted from 2019 through 2024; Bithumb held the position in 2025; and Upbit holds it for 2026, under the title the organiser's site uses for it, "2026 Official Presenting Partner" (프레젠팅 파트너 / 2026 공식 주관 파트너). The bid was led by Yoon Seon-ju (윤선주), chief business innovation officer at Dunamu.
Financial News is not an independent source on this event. Its masthead lists KBW founder Seonik Jeon as vice-chairman, publisher and printer; Jeon is the son of the paper's chairman, Jeon Jae-ho; and the paper co-hosted the 2020 edition. Figures it reports on Korea Blockchain Week are organiser-side figures.
Where and when each edition has been held
Every physical edition has been held in Seoul, and the main conference has moved between four hotel venues.
The first edition ran as a week from July 16 to 20, 2018 at The Shilla Seoul, with Beyond Blocks Summit Seoul as the main conference on July 17–18. Confirmed speakers included Kim Seo-jun of Hashed, who gave the keynote; Michael Novogratz of Galaxy Digital; Dominic Williams of Dfinity, in its first stage appearance anywhere; Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, in his first Asian appearance; and Han Jae-sun of Kakao's Ground X.
The second edition ran from September 27 to October 4, 2019 at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas, with D.FINE as the main conference on September 30 and October 1 under the theme "The Real and The Virtual". Nick Szabo and Ted Yin were among the confirmed speakers; the 2019 speaker total could not be verified.
The third edition opened as a video stream at noon on November 13, 2020, after a hybrid opening session on November 4 at the YES24 Live Hall in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, and with a second batch of keynote sessions published on November 27, as reported by Financial News, which co-hosted the edition and whose publisher is the event's founder. The name of the 2020 main conference could not be verified.
The fourth edition ran on December 8, 2021, online, as KBW 2021 IMPACT, identified as the fourth by Edaily. Both the 2020 and the 2021 editions took place, and both ran online. ZDNet Korea's 2022 preview states that the previous two years had been held online because of COVID-19 and that 2022 would be the fifth edition and the return to a physical format.
The fifth edition ran from August 7 to 14, 2022, with IMPACT on August 8–9 at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Samseong-dong, Gangnam, across two stages named BLOCK and HASH.
The sixth edition held IMPACT on September 5–6, 2023 at The Shilla Seoul. Two week spans are on record and neither supersedes the other: September 4–9 in the organiser's pre-event release and September 4–10 in Forkast's on-site reporting. The difference is the publisher, an organiser announcement against a report filed from the event.
The seventh edition ran from September 1 to 7, 2024, with IMPACT on September 3–4 at the Grand Walkerhill Seoul.
The eighth edition held IMPACT on September 23–24, 2025 at the Walkerhill Hotel & Resort, the last to carry the IMPACT name. For the surrounding week, the record here is limited to the organiser's March 2025 launch release, which stated September 22–27.
The record of held editions ends there. Beyond the edition already announced, nothing further has been published on the official site, in the organiser's press releases or through its newswire distribution.
Korea Blockchain Week vs Consensus, Bitcoin Asia, TOKEN2049 and ETHDenver
Five structural properties locate Korea Blockchain Week among the five conferences in this series, each stated as a difference rather than a ranking.
Korea Blockchain Week shares its founding year with two of the other four. Its first edition was held in 2018, as was TOKEN2049's, which opened on March 20–21 that year at the Kerry Hotel in Hong Kong, while ETHDenver was launched in 2017 and held its first physical edition in 2018. Consensus is the oldest of the five, first held in 2015; Bitcoin Asia is the most recent, launched in 2024.
Ownership separates them more sharply than age does. FactBlock is privately held, as is TOKEN2049's organiser, BOB Group Limited, registered in Hong Kong. Consensus is produced by CoinDesk Events, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bullish, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as BLSH — the only one of the five owned by a listed exchange group. Bitcoin Asia's organiser, BTC Inc, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nasdaq-listed Nakamoto Inc. ETHDenver is owned by SporkDAO, a Colorado limited cooperative association, and is the only community-owned event of the five.
Scope and geography complete the set. Korea Blockchain Week covers crypto generally; Consensus treats crypto, blockchain and AI as one field; TOKEN2049 is a general Web3 event; ETHDenver is centred on the Ethereum ecosystem with a developer hackathon at its base; Bitcoin Asia is Bitcoin-only. Every Korea Blockchain Week edition has taken place in Seoul, as Bitcoin Asia has stayed in Hong Kong and ETHDenver in Denver, while Consensus runs two editions a year in two cities and TOKEN2049 multiple city lines.
Scale is deliberately absent here. The five publish on different measurement levels — cumulative person-times, headcounts, registrations, passes sold and pre-event expectations — and an ordering across those levels would be an artefact of the measurements.
Korea Blockchain Week and the Upbit D Conference
The closest structural comparison is domestic. Upbit D Conference, run by Dunamu, the operator of the Upbit exchange, was founded in the same year, 2018, and has run since as a separate Korean line, built as a one- or two-day conference rather than a week.
Its editions ran on September 13–14, 2018 at ICC Jeju; September 4–5, 2019 at the Grand Hyatt Incheon; November 30 to December 4, 2020, fully online and free; with a keynote on September 1, 2021, online; September 22–23, 2022 at BPEX in Busan; November 13, 2023 at the Grand Walkerhill Seoul; November 14, 2024 at The Shilla Seoul; and September 9, 2025 at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas. Every edition has been held inside Korea or online, with no overseas edition on record. The 2023 edition was also the renaming: Upbit Developer Conference became Upbit D Conference, widening from a developer technical conference into one covering policy, finance and culture. Across all editions to 2025, BizWatch puts the series at approximately 35,000 cumulative person-times and about 1,400 participating companies.
Dunamu has announced that it will not hold Upbit D Conference in 2026, the first break in eight years, describing that year as "a time of reorganisation for the next leap" and stating that it plans to present the event again in a more meaningful form afterwards. The brand remains with Dunamu. In the same period Dunamu became a sponsor of Korea Blockchain Week.
One documented sequence follows: Korea Blockchain Week's title partner has moved from Hashed across 2018 to 2024, to Bithumb in 2025, to Upbit in 2026, while Upbit's operator has paused its own conference for the same year. The two facts are stated in parallel; neither source establishes a relationship between them.
Moments that mattered
Four episodes carry news value, each dated to the edition that hosted it.
Vitalik Buterin gave a keynote at KBW 2022 on August 8, 2022, and said on stage that The Merge was expected to complete in the second half of September — at that point still a future event. He appeared at the 2023 edition again.
The 2023 edition also put Wemade on stage alongside Buterin. WEMIX, the company's token, had been delisted by four Korean exchanges including Upbit in December 2022, and Wemade's injunction application against the delisting was dismissed — less than a year before that appearance. The two are recorded in sequence; neither source establishes a connection between them.
September 2025 produced a split documented on both sides. Donald Trump Jr. spoke at Korea Blockchain Week 2025, the edition carrying Bithumb's title sponsorship, while Eric Trump appeared by video link at Upbit's D Conference in the same period. Both are shareholders in American Bitcoin. The Korea Economic Daily records the two appearances at the two competing exchanges' events.
In December 2025, FactBlock was put up for sale in its entirety at an asking price of about 140 billion won. No transaction followed; the figure is an asking price on a listing rather than a completed valuation.
Figures the organiser has published, edition by edition
Every scale figure for this event originates with the organiser or an organiser-affiliated publication, and none has been independently audited. One exception is flagged where it appears.
For 2019, approximately 1,500 people were recorded on the opening day of D.FINE — a single day, main conference only, and a reporter's on-site estimate rather than an organiser count. It is the only figure in the record not published by the organising side.
For 2022, the organiser reported 8,700 cumulative person-times across the two IMPACT days, of which 42%, roughly 3,700 person-times, were foreign, as published by Financial News, a publication whose publisher is the event's founder. ZDNet Korea reported a final speaker count of around 130, after work-in-progress counts of about 80 in June and about 100 in August.
For 2023, the organiser reported 6,000 cumulative person-times across the two IMPACT days, with foreign attendance at 40%. Ticketing was capped at 3,000 passes, which sold out four days before opening, on September 1. Forkast recorded 263 companies and 85 panels, also measured over the main conference only. The speaker total carries two published figures at the same level, 240-plus in the official recap and 200-plus given on site by Hashed chief executive Kim Seo-jun; they differ by publisher and both are printed.
For 2024, the organiser reported 17,000 cumulative person-times across the two IMPACT days, with foreign attendance at 35%, again through Financial News, whose publisher is the event's founder. The same edition sold 9,000 passes at US$999 each, with sales closing four days early on August 31, and listed 340 speakers. The English-language release then published that same 17,000 as "over 17,000 participants" for the whole event: one figure moved from the two-day main-conference level to the week level without its qualifier moving with it.
For 2025, the organiser reported 28,000 cumulative person-times, foreign attendance at 35%, more than 300 speakers, about 110 exhibition booths against about 60 the year before and 5,200-plus companies, through Financial News on the same non-independent basis. Side events carry two figures, 450 in the Korean-language account and "80+ official" in the English one; the English number carries the qualifier "official" and the Korean one does not, so both are printed rather than reconciled.
Two published growth rates should not be carried forward. The organiser gave +70% for 2024, which compares a whole-event figure with a main-conference figure, and +76% for 2025, stated against an unspecified base: back-solving it implies a 2024 base of about 15,900 cumulative person-times, while every 2024 figure the organiser published is 17,000. Neither rate reconciles with the organiser's own numbers.
FactBlock's corporate site gives 164,200-plus cumulative attendance since 2018, of which 72,700-plus at IMPACT editions, together with 1,240-plus speakers, 870-plus of them at IMPACT. Forbes, citing the event's own blog, separately gives more than 136,000 people since the start. The two cumulative totals are different numbers with different publishers and are not substitutes for one another, and neither describes a single edition.
Three gaps remain and are not filled by inference: attendance for 2018, and attendance and speaker counts for 2020 and 2021, could not be verified. The "340+" speaker figure still carried on the organiser's applications page under the label "last year" belongs to the 2024 edition, not to 2025.
How many people actually attend Korea Blockchain Week
Attendance figures for Korea Blockchain Week are organiser-reported apart from the 2019 reporter estimate, and a single edition can carry three numbers without any of them being wrong.
The 2025 edition is the clearest case. The Korean-language figure, 28,000, is 연인원: cumulative person-times across the two IMPACT main-conference days, counting a two-day attendee twice. The official English post-event release published by the organiser gives 12,000-plus attendees, a headcount covering the event. 28,000 cumulative person-times and 12,000-plus attendees are not in conflict — they are different quantities measured at different levels, and both can be true at once.
The conflict sits elsewhere. The organiser's own About page shows 13,000-plus, with no definition attached to it, against the 12,000-plus in its English release. Two official figures, the same measurement level, different numbers: both are printed, and the 13,000-plus cannot be quoted on its own. The statistics block it comes from is visibly broken: on the same organiser page it shows "0+" for sponsors and "0+" for side events.
One rule follows from all of it: 연인원 is rendered as cumulative person-times and never as attendees.
Frequently asked questions
Who runs Korea Blockchain Week, and who owns the organizer? The event is owned and produced by FactBlock, whose registered entity is FactBlock Inc (팩트블록(주)) in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Seonik Jeon is Founder & Chairman of both the event and the company, and Andrew Park, whose Korean name is Park Wi-ik, is chief executive and the registered representative. FactBlock is privately held.
Where is Korea Blockchain Week held? It is held in Seoul. The main conference has used four venues: The Shilla Seoul, the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Gangnam, the Grand Walkerhill Seoul and the Walkerhill Hotel & Resort. Individual dates are announced by the organiser for each edition.
How many editions have been held, and has the event ever been skipped? No year has been skipped since the first edition in 2018, and Newstop Korea records eight consecutive years of editions from the founding. The 2020 and 2021 editions were held online rather than cancelled, and 2022 was the first edition to return to a physical format.
What is IMPACT? IMPACT was the name of the two-day main conference from 2021 through 2025. Before that it was Beyond Blocks Summit Seoul in 2018 and D.FINE in 2019; the 2020 online edition's name could not be verified, other than that it was not IMPACT. The name was retired after 2025 in favour of the single acronym KBW.
How many people attend Korea Blockchain Week? Published figures sit at different measurement levels and are not comparable with one another. The organiser reported 8,700 cumulative person-times for 2022, 6,000 for 2023, 17,000 for 2024 and 28,000 for 2025, each covering the two main-conference days. Separately, the organiser's English release for 2025 gives 12,000-plus attendees as a headcount.
Who counts these figures, and are they audited? The organiser counts them, and none has been independently audited. Several of the Korean-language figures come through Financial News, whose publisher is the event's founder and which co-hosted the 2020 edition, and are therefore organiser-side figures rather than third-party confirmation. The exception is the 2019 opening-day estimate of about 1,500, made on site by a reporter.
How is Korea Blockchain Week related to the Upbit D Conference? They are separate events founded in the same year, 2018. Korea Blockchain Week is produced by FactBlock; Upbit D Conference is run by Dunamu, the operator of Upbit. Upbit D Conference was renamed from Upbit Developer Conference in 2023, and every one of its editions has been held inside Korea or online.
Related reading
Other Bitbase articles on this topic:
- TOKEN2049: The Web3 Conference Held in Singapore and Dubai, Editions and Attendance
- Bitcoin vs Ethereum: What's the Difference?
- What Is Bitcoin Dominance?
References
[1] Korea Blockchain Week, official site, including the About and Speakers pages, accessed August 2026. koreablockchainweek.com
[2] ZDNet Korea, "Beyond Blocks Summit Seoul and Korea Blockchain Week 2018," June 2018. zdnet.co.kr
[3] ZDNet Korea, "KBW 2022 Returns as an Offline Event," June 2022. zdnet.co.kr
[4] Edaily, "KBW 2021 IMPACT," December 2021. edaily.co.kr
[5] Financial News, closing report on Korea Blockchain Week 2025, September 2025. fnnews.com
[6] Financial News, closing report on Korea Blockchain Week 2024, September 2024. fnnews.com
[7] Financial News, coverage of the 2020 online edition, November 2020. fnnews.com
[8] Newstop Korea, profile of FactBlock and Korea Blockchain Week, December 2025. newstopkorea.com
[9] VentureSquare, report on Korea Blockchain Week 2023, September 2023. venturesquare.net
[10] Forkast, "The Merge, Crypto Payments and the Mainstream: Vitalik Buterin in Seoul," August 2022. forkast.news
[11] Bitcoin.com News, official English post-event release for Korea Blockchain Week 2025, October 2025. news.bitcoin.com
[12] BizWatch, "Dunamu Will Not Hold Upbit D Conference in 2026," August 2026. news.bizwatch.co.kr
[13] Forkast, on-site report from Korea Blockchain Week 2023 on US and Asian regulation, September 2023. forkast.news
[14] Forkast, report on the dismissal of Wemade's injunction over the WEMIX delisting, December 2022. forkast.news
[15] Decenter, coverage of D.FINE at Korea Blockchain Week 2019, 2019. decenter.kr
[16] Korea Economic Daily, coverage of the first Upbit Developer Conference, September 2018. hankyung.com
[17] Korea Economic Daily, coverage of the 2023 Upbit D Conference and its renaming, November 2023. hankyung.com
[18] Korea Economic Daily, report on the Trump family appearances at two Korean exchange events, September 2025. hankyung.com
[19] Forbes, "Why Korea May Be the Most Important Crypto Market of the Next Decade," December 2025. forbes.com
[20] PR Newswire, official English post-event release for Korea Blockchain Week 2024, September 2024. prnewswire.com
Disclaimer: This article is editorial coverage from Bitbase Research about an industry event, provided for information only. Bitbase is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by this event or its organizers. Attendance, speaker and sponsorship figures are as published by the organizers and have not been independently audited. Nothing here constitutes investment, trading, tax, or financial advice. Event details such as dates, venues and speaker line-ups can change, so refer to the official event sources for the latest information.
