South Korea’s Crypto Shift: Corporations, Stablecoins, and New Regulations

• South Korea plans to allow corporations to invest in crypto by enabling corporate real-name accounts tied to exchanges.
• Regulators accelerate efforts on stablecoins and second-phase crypto legislation to align with global policy shifts.
• The FIU is reviewing potential sanctions on Upbit for violating KYC rules and engaging with unregistered businesses.

The South Korean regulators are planning to come up with new measures to allow corporations to engage in the buying of cryptocurrencies. The government is also ramping up efforts to address stablecoins and continue the second phase of the crypto bill.  

Global Shifts and Crypto Regulation

According to a recent report, Mr. Kim Byung-hwan, Chairman of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) provided the following information at the press conference on 22 January. The change of the global crypto policy due to the second Trump administration has led to South Korea accelerating the process of regulating the crypto market.  

Source: Financial Services Commission

Kim underlined the importance of the development of the industry as well as the protection of investors. ”We have heard concerns about how the virtual asset industry should be developed, and how investors should be protected,” he said. However, Kim pointed out that the US is expected to be more aggressive in its approach to crypto, which may put pressure on South Korea to move faster on regulation.  

A new change in the coming months is the ability of corporations to establish real-name accounts related to virtual asset exchanges. Neither of these accounts can be used by businesses at the moment, which means that companies cannot easily invest in crypto. The FSC is trying to extend the ban on the accounts step by step to allow corporate accounts.  

Stablecoin Legislation Acceleration

Officials are also working to quickly create a legal framework for stablecoins since these types of tokens are becoming more popular. These digital assets, anchored to fiat currencies such as the US dollar have been a focus of the second wave of crypto legislation. Kim said that the second phase would be dedicated to stablecoins which had not been fully examined in the first phase. “We will speed up this process,” he said.  

Other than these policy changes, Kim was also questioned on the sanctions check by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) on Upbit, one of South Korea’s biggest exchange. Upbit has acted contrary to the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms and has engaged in transactions with unregistered companies. The FIU is still considering possible measures at the moment. The country has been quick to establish better regulations and this could send the market into a new direction in the next few years.