South Korea's Financial Services Commission is in final consultations to unveil its Digital Asset Basic Act this month, with the bill covering who may issue and distribute won-pegged stablecoins, how exchanges are licensed and who may own them, Seoul Economic Daily reported . A senior regulatory official told the paper the commission is preparing to have the bill introduced within the month and that little has changed from the authorities' earlier draft.
The bill is a wide sector law. It covers the issuance and distribution of stablecoins, requirements for virtual asset service providers and rules for exchanges, and FSC Chairman Lee Eok-won said earlier this year it would have about 135 articles, with the final version expected to contain more. Regulators had planned to produce a government bill last year, but talks dragged on over exchange ownership caps and who may issue stablecoins.
Who may own an exchange. The leading option is a cap of 15% to 20% on major shareholders' stakes, in line with the limit for alternative trading systems under the capital markets law, with a grace period of about three years. Holders would face no sanctions if they sold the excess within that window, according to Seoul Economic Daily. Another option is to restrict voting rights instead of stakes. ChainCatcher's summary of the draft gave a shorter adjustment period of one to two years and said property-rights concerns could push the limit towards voting rights, so the grace period is still unsettled across reports.
Who may issue stablecoins. Won-pegged stablecoins are expected to be issued by bank-centered consortiums, as the Bank of Korea has argued. The newspaper said specifics such as the stake caps and issuer eligibility could still change in parliament, and that opinions differ even among ruling-party lawmakers.
ChainCatcher's report said the bill would move exchange entry from notification to licensing. It added that officials are discussing no-fault liability for compensating customers after hacks or system failures, and treating violations of the obligation to hold customer crypto assets as grounds for suspending operations. These items come from a secondary report and were not confirmed in the Seoul Economic Daily piece.
The ruling party, which is pushing to delay crypto taxation, has cited passage of the digital asset law as a prerequisite, tying the bill to the tax. The government backed a fourth delay to 2029 last week, and the finance minister linked the new date to the pending Digital Asset Basic Act. The tax law and the licensing law are therefore moving as a pair.
The security record is also pushing the agenda. The Financial Services Commission's emergency meeting with exchanges after the Binance theft follows a run of attacks on Korean institutions that includes Shinhan Bank and KB Kookmin Bank. More recently, Korean exchange GOPAX, in which Binance holds about two-thirds, halted trading on November 6 after a threat email and was still offline on November 8, Seoul Economic Daily reported.
Korea's bank-led stablecoin model is close to Taiwan's , where a bank must hold more than 25% of an issuer and more than half for joint ownership. Hong Kong's first licences also went to bank-linked issuers . Japan's megabanks are working towards joint issuance . The pattern across the region is stablecoins issued by banks or bank-led groups, with exchanges licensed and, in Korea's case, ownership limited.
Korea has already moved on offshore platforms and exchange partnerships by blocking 27 unregistered overseas exchanges .
We are watching two developments on this front: firstly, which banks lead the won stablecoin consortiums and whether non-bank exchanges and fintechs get a role, and whether the bill's hack-liability and cold-storage rules end up in the text, which would raise costs for every exchange.
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