Nonfungible tokens have seen a soaring popularity this year, but its future in South Korea remains uncertain due to legal gray areas, experts said Thursday during a conference on NFTs held in Seoul.

Despite the short history of NFTs, the digital asset could create many opportunities for domestic companies as they try to add value to the fledgling technology and industry, experts said. But there are limits to bringing it into the commercial sphere as the domestic regulatory framework is not ready.

“While NFTs can be characterized in various ways depending on business areas, there are a lot of legal ambiguity, which make businesses confused,” said Cho Won-hee, managing partner at D’Light Law Group.

Cho said some NFT businesses could be subject to registration with financial authorities just like cryptocurrency exchanges, in accordance with the revised Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. Authorities should give clear guidelines to prevent legal hurdles from impeding the industry and giving it a global competitive edge, Cho added.

During the conference, various companies introduced their services ranging from artificial intelligence-based music creation services to financial services that utilize personal data integration called “MyData” and NFTs.

Meanwhile, media artist Song Hojun said NFT is an emerging topic for artists and many have been learning about the new technology as they consider it as a new opportunity.

Song and Cho were speakers for the Blockchain Trend Conference that was held by local media TokenPost.

By Park Ga-young (gypark@heraldcorp.com)