Dunamu and Visa announced a strategic partnership around stablecoin and AI-based next-gen payments, unveiled by Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-suk and Visa global president Oliver Jenkyn in San Francisco. The scope covers stablecoin-based payments and global remittance broadly, no specific product structure confirmed yet, they're planning to develop it step-by-step depending on how the regulatory framework shapes up. Notably, they're also exploring business models built on OUSD, the Open Standard consortium's dollar stablecoin, the same one that landed 13 Korean companies on its partner list back in June, several of whom said they'd never formally agreed to join. The AI angle is the more forward-looking piece: combining AI with stablecoin settlement infrastructure, specifically looking at "agentic commerce," AI agents autonomously searching, purchasing, and paying on a user's behalf, and the payment infrastructure that would require.

Dunamu completed its US GAAP accounting conversion, the first concrete operational step toward a Nasdaq listing, and reportedly met with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins as part of it. Atkins has apparently been actively courting offshore crypto exchanges to list in the US, and Dunamu was one of them. The strategic logic connects directly to the Naver-Dunamu share exchange, which has been repeatedly delayed and is now targeting a November 19 shareholder vote and December 31 close. Korea just implemented a rule banning parent-subsidiary dual listings as of this month, so once Dunamu becomes a Naver Financial subsidiary, it can't list domestically. A Nasdaq listing is being read as the required exit path for Dunamu shareholders to actually get liquidity and voting rights on their post-swap Naver Financial shares, and separately as a fallback if the Naver deal falls through entirely, Dunamu going public alone. On structure, this won't be a full "flip" like Coupang did, no US holding company replacing the Korean entity. It's expected to follow SK Hynix's recent approach instead, an ADR listing with the Korean operating company staying intact. That matters for users, Upbit accounts, KRW deposits, and Korea's cold-wallet custody requirements under the user protection law all stay unchanged domestically. The competitive rationale is stark. Upbit holds 68.7% of the Korean market, more than double Bithumb's 27.2%, and briefly hit #2# globally by spot volume in 2023. But regulatory constraints kept it undervalued internationally, current volume is only about 11% of Binance's, and Upbit dropped from top-4 globally by 24h volume at end of 2025 to 26th by late January. Listing in the US is partly about finally getting priced like the exchange its domestic numbers suggest it should be. Two separate risk factors remain, one on each side. In Korea, the FTC merger review is targeting year-end completion, and Naver's ongoing appeal of its ₩200M antitrust fine looks less likely to be a disqualifying factor now that Korea's revised financial information act (effective Aug 20) includes a materiality carve-out. The bigger domestic risk is the share buyback threshold, dissenting shareholders can demand buybacks at ₩439,252/share between Nov 19 and Dec 9, and the deal has a built-in escape clause if total buyback claims exceed ₩1.2T, a real risk given retail holds over ₩3.5T in shares.

DP is confirming there will be no further crypto tax delay, this is the clearest signal yet that January 2027 implementation is actually happening, not just the standard "we'll proceed as scheduled" line from earlier this summer. The reasoning: this has already been delayed three times, and delaying again on top of that would undermine the basic tax principle of "income gets taxed," a line DP officials are explicitly using. The government's newly released tax reform package also doesn't include any provision for further delay, confirming this at the policy-document level, not just in verbal statements. The problem critics are pointing to is sequencing. The Digital Asset Basic Act, which is supposed to establish the actual market rules, issuance, distribution, disclosure, still hasn't passed, with roughly 10 competing bills still stuck in committee. So Korea is on track to start taxing crypto income before the law governing the market itself exists. One industry source flagged the specific mechanical problems this creates: no loss offsetting across gains and losses, and easy avoidance paths through DeFi, meaning the tax burden falls disproportionately on ordinary users trading in won on domestic exchanges, likely accelerating capital flight to offshore platforms. The stock tax equity argument resurfaces too, since the financial investment income tax was scrapped, stock investors pay essentially nothing on capital gains, while crypto investors face a flat 22%. That's the exact fairness gap PPP has used against this tax from the start, and it's likely to reignite debate over reinstating the financial investment income tax as well. DP's response to all of this is to lean harder into finishing the Basic Act this session, want both the legal framework and the tax justification secured within the same legislative session. But the two things that killed every previous attempt, the ownership cap and the bank-majority stablecoin issuer structure, are still unresolved between government, ruling party, and opposition, so there's real doubt whether the Basic Act clears in time regardless of DP's intent. Meanwhile PPP keeps filing delay bills from a different angle, Jung Sung-kook's bill pushing implementation to 2030 being the most recent, positioning tax delay as a tool to use against the government in the upcoming tax reform review process rather than a genuine standalone push.

Korea's broadcast regulator officially voted to block Polymarket, ending the review process that started back in early July when it decided to hear from the operator first before ruling. The reasoning: Polymarket's winner-take-all payout structure on events users can't control, politics, economics, weather, was judged to constitute gambling-style incentive. Also cited: Polymarket actively operates the market, sets trading rules, runs the crypto settlement system, and takes a fee cut, functioning as an operator rather than a passive platform. Police and other agencies also weighed in during review that the activity could meet the legal threshold for gambling under Korean law.

📱[AMA] Acurast, Real Decentralized Compute Network, Powered by Phones - Date: August 13th 9pm - Guest: @Acurast Acurast is a DePIN network powered by a decentralized network of smartphones. It is rapidly expanding its ecosystem, with 279,700 smartphones currently running on the network, 919 million on-chain transactions, and 600,000 contract deployments. Building on its established network, Acurast, which provides infrastructure for projects such as peaq and OKX AI, is now introducing itself to the Korean community! Let's Connect

Koscom signed an MOU with NH Investment & Securities to build out STO infrastructure ahead of the revised Electronic Securities Act and Capital Markets Act taking effect in February 2027. NH joins Koscom's shared STO platform, which is designed to let multiple securities firms use common infrastructure rather than each building duplicate systems. Four areas of cooperation: validating systems and workflows on Koscom's shared platform, linking STO issuance and account management, identifying new digital asset and STO business models together, and coordinating response to regulatory and market changes as the framework develops. They'll also jointly explore tokenizing standard securities, bonds and equities, not just niche RWA categories, applying blockchain to existing issuance and distribution processes. NH recently stood up its own dedicated digital asset task force to prepare for this shift, which is now the vehicle driving its side of the Koscom partnership. Koscom's shared platform now has a fairly long list of participants: Kiwoom, Daishin, IBK, Yuanta, BNK, DB, iM, Meritz, Kyobo, Daol, and Woori, with NH now added. On the infrastructure side, Koscom already built STO issuance infrastructure with LG CNS, ran a total-quantity management testbed with Korea Securities Depository, and has been running stablecoin-based STO settlement PoCs, so this is one more securities firm plugging into an ecosystem that's already fairly developed on the plumbing side, well ahead of the legal framework actually taking effect.

Korea's cabinet approved a major overhaul to VASP licensing and AML rules. Big changes: expanded shareholder review, a new 200% debt-ratio cap, and the ₩1M travel rule threshold is gone entirely, now applies to all transfers. Major-shareholder review now catches anyone who appointed the CEO or board majority, and if the top shareholder is a corporate entity, its own controlling shareholder gets pulled in too. New disqualification rules: debt ratio under 200%, no defaults in the past 3 years, no history as a failed or license-revoked financial institution. Existing exchanges get a 1-year grace period on the debt ratio. Killing the ₩1M travel rule floor closes the obvious workaround of splitting transfers to dodge reporting. Offshore exchange and private wallet transfers now get risk-tiered: low-risk foreign exchanges are fine, others only allowed if sender and recipient are verified as the same person, high-risk transfers blocked outright, and anything above ₩10M requires the exchange to run its own suspicious-transaction monitoring. Timing: VASP registration rules take effect August 20. Travel rule and offshore/wallet transfer rules kick in six months after promulgation. FIU briefing for exchanges is August 13.

PPP Rep. Jung Sung-kook just filed the first formal bill proposing a 3-year delay on crypto taxation, pushing the start date from January 2027 to January 2030, rather than the outright repeal Song Eon-seok's earlier bill sought. The rationale is framed as buying time for proper system-building rather than blocking taxation entirely, giving taxpayers predictability and preventing regulatory confusion while investor protections and a fair tax framework get worked out first. This adds a third distinct position to the crypto tax fight: DP wants 2027 implementation as legislated, Song's PPP bill wants the tax provision deleted entirely, and now Jung's PPP bill wants a middle path, delay to 2030, not repeal. The equity argument stays consistent with PPP's prior position, since the financial investment income tax on stocks was scrapped, stock capital gains are effectively untaxed, so taxing crypto gains at a flat 22% is inconsistent treatment. That argument is already sitting in the Finance Committee via Song's bill, currently headed to subcommittee, where DP is expected to push back hard on repeal given Koo Yun-chul's repeated confirmations that 2027 implementation proceeds as scheduled. Worth noting Jung has a track record on crypto-friendly legislation specifically, he previously filed the first bill in this Assembly session to allow institutional investors to hold crypto through spot ETFs including Bitcoin and Ethereum. This delay bill continues that pattern, positioning PPP as running multiple parallel tracks (repeal via Song, delay via Jung, institutional access via Jung) rather than a single unified crypto tax position. With three competing bills now on the table, DP's "implement as scheduled," PPP's "repeal entirely," and PPP's own "delay to 2030," the actual outcome depends heavily on how the newly-reconstituted Finance Committee, with DP holding the chair and floor-leader position but PPP holding meaningful committee seats, resolves this over the coming months.

Kiwoom Securities' Bithumb stake acquisition is effectively dead. Internal sources say talks have become unviable to continue, partly because the deal became public and added pressure Kiwoom didn't want, and partly because of Bithumb's genuinely convoluted ownership structure. An internal source put it plainly, the complexity plus the burden of getting the deal done created an internal consensus this isn't worth pursuing. There's also apparently a real strategic split inside Kiwoom, one camp wants to focus resources on STO, another thinks strengthening existing pension, IB, and retail businesses matters more, and the anti-acquisition side specifically argued the extra burden of a Bithumb deal isn't worth it relative to those priorities. The ownership structure that reportedly scared them off is genuinely layered: founder Lee Jung-hoon and CEO Kim Byung-gun sit at the very top through SG Brain Technology Consulting (50% + 0.01% allied stake for Lee, 49.99% for Kim), which controls BTHMB Holdings Pte Ltd, which controls DAA, which controls Bithumb Holdings (73.56% of Bithumb), alongside Vident (10.22%), T Sciencetific (7.17%), and other shareholders (9.05%). That's four holding layers before you get to the actual exchange, and Vident specifically has its own separate delisting risk hanging over it from the embezzlement case flagged back in June. This doesn't kill Bithumb's ownership story entirely, other securities firms are reportedly still interested precisely because acquiring a licensed exchange gets you an instant user base and cross-sell surface with existing financial products. But the same structural complexity that pushed Kiwoom out remains the central obstacle for whoever tries next. Kiwoom's official response was a flat "cannot confirm."

Bank of Korea created a dedicated Asset Tokenization unit under its Digital Currency Department, moving treasury bond tokenization from experimental work into a formal organizational line, the clearest signal yet that this is heading toward actual implementation, not just research. This is the final piece of what BOK Governor Shin Hyun-song has called a "trilogy," a framework he's pushed since his BIS days: CBDC, deposit tokens (already tested via Project Han River), and now asset tokenization, specifically government bonds as the most important national asset. The new unit isn't tasked with more research, it's built to execute a "unified ledger" strategy where central bank money, deposit tokens, and asset tokens all move on the same platform. The technical upside BOK is describing: settlement, clearing, and payment collapse into a single simultaneous process instead of separate steps, enabling programmable conditional payments and automatic collateral settlement. Practically, that means things like EV charging subsidies or government expense accounts could be disbursed as tokenized deposits programmed to only work for specific purposes and locations. It also enables atomic settlement, money and asset transfer simultaneously, eliminating the delivery-versus-payment risk where one side sends first and waits for the other. BOK's own framing was pointed: the US, UK, and Japan have already reached commercialization stage or finished design work on digital treasury bonds, and this new unit exists so Korea doesn't fall behind in that global race. A BOK official added that asset tokenization is where finance is headed regardless in the AI era, and that the unit, currently smaller than a full team, is expected to grow given its strategic priority. The other organizational change worth noting: BOK's North Korea Economic Research office got renamed to Economic Security office, reflecting the rising importance of geoeconomics as countries increasingly weaponize trade controls and resources. Both changes came in Shin's first reorganization since taking office, and line up with a newly formed director-level strategy group BOK just convened last week specifically to coordinate Korea's position on BIS agenda items, deposit and treasury tokenization being flagged as a core topic expected to dominate future BIS-level discussion.

Hanwha Investment Securities turned down a chance to cash out roughly $650M from Dunamu, and put in another $427M instead. In January, Hanwha declined to sell its Dunamu stake into the Naver Financial share-exchange offer, which would have converted its entire holding at ₩439,252/share, worth about ₩909B. Four months later in May, it bought 3.90% more Dunamu stock from Kakao Investment at that exact same per-share price, ₩597.8B, raising its stake from 5.94% to 9.84% and becoming Dunamu's third-largest shareholder. The math on conviction here is stark. Original 2021 stake cost about ₩28,175/share. The May purchase price was roughly 15.6x that. Turning down a 15x-plus cash-out opportunity to instead buy more at the same elevated price is about as clear a signal as a company can send that it's not treating this as a financial position, it's treating Dunamu as infrastructure. The company's own framing backs that up. They said the added investment reflects a view that crypto exchanges are evolving beyond simple brokerage into complex infrastructure players, custody, settlement, institutional services, and that they're building out their digital asset value chain around that thesis. Hanwha's digital asset research lead Choi Yoon-young laid out the actual vision in an interview: tokenized securities, Bitcoin, and prediction markets all tradeable from one app, sooner than people expect, arguing tokenization of standard securities like stocks and bonds will move faster than niche RWA categories like real estate or music royalties, pointing to NYSE and DTCC directly building blockchain infrastructure as evidence. This connects to Hanwha's broader "Global No.1 RWA Hub" strategy from December, and the assembled pieces now form a coherent stack, Xangle for data, Kresus for Web3 infrastructure, Securitize for RWA tokenization, and a $2.1M stake in Digital Asset Holdings (operator of the Canton Network, backed by DTCC and Goldman Sachs) from July, which Hanwha plans to use for its own platform buildout. The MTS app already got a "Digital Asset Home" section in May, tied into Xangle's data feed, with crypto watchlist tracking alongside stocks, not trading yet, but the same-screen integration groundwork is visibly underway. The ₩597.8B additional Dunamu purchase alone represents 28.91% of Hanwha Investment Securities' own equity capital, company's strategy office called it "a major decision reaffirming the company's strategic direction toward digital finance transformation." Zoom out on the full-year sequence, decline the cash-out in January, add ₩597.8B in May, launch the Digital Asset Home the same month, invest ₩30B in Canton in July, and Choi's "sooner than you'd think" framing reads less like speculation and more like a company describing its own roadmap.

[Breaking News] Korea to Implement Crypto Tax in 2027, Government Announces Tax Reform - Crypto asset income taxation to take effect starting January 1, 2027 - Basic deduction of KRW 2.5 million - 20% separate taxation rate - Up to 22% when including local income tax - Previous implementation had been postponed three times - Government's stance: implement first, then supplement/adjust as needed - Crypto asset service providers to be added to targets for comprehensive financial asset inquiries and tax audits - Strengthened collection of tax data related to inheritance and gifts

Korea's FSC misled the National Assembly on whether it stress-tested single-stock leverage ETFs before launch. Chairman Lee Eok-won told the Financial Services Committee last week "we conducted the review," but documents FSC itself submitted this week show no actual stress test happened, neither internal nor through an outside institution. The gap between the claim and the paper trail: when PPP's Park Sung-hoon asked in the July 29 committee session whether risk analysis including a stress test had been done before launch, Lee answered "it was all reviewed" and promised to provide documentation. What FSC actually submitted was a 2024 Korea Capital Market Institute report on leverage/inverse ETF performance factors, rebalancing volume by leverage multiplier, and market cap/trading volume statistics for stocks like Samsung and SK Hynix as of March. No specific shock scenario modeling a Samsung or Hynix price crash, the thing an actual stress test would produce, showed up anywhere. This is the same product category flagged earlier this month for pushing combined Samsung + Hynix trading volume to 83% of total market volume and tightening the correlation between those two stocks and the entire KOSPI index. FSC itself has already publicly warned these products carry higher loss risk than standard leverage ETFs due to volatility amplification through daily rebalancing, and that excessive trading driven by these products degrades individual investor outcomes and needs policy intervention. So the regulator approved and launched a product it now says needs policy intervention to manage, warned publicly about its risks after the fact, and when directly asked in a hearing whether it had actually tested for the failure scenario, said yes when the paper trail says no.

Two Korean regulators are publicly disagreeing over why Binance isn't blocked, while OKX and Bybit already are. FIU's position: Binance is excluded from review because it stopped Korean-language service and marketing back in August 2021, right after Korea's amended financial information act was announced, so it doesn't count as actively targeting Korean users. The broadcast regulator's response was blunt, excluding a major exchange just because it doesn't offer Korean-language service raises a fairness problem, especially against the backdrop of OKX and Bybit getting cut off from Google Play this month despite similar accessibility. The bigger disagreement is about blocking methodology generally. FIU argued unregistered offshore exchange sites aren't just an unlicensed-operation issue, they're tied to investment fraud targeting young people and illegal currency exchange, serious enough to warrant active blocking. FIU also flagged a specific bureaucratic gap: when police investigations stall because site operators can't be located, the broadcast regulator's internal rule to suspend review during active investigations ends up creating an indefinite regulatory blind spot. The broadcast regulator pushed back on two fronts. First, procedurally, they can't lift a suspension without official confirmation from FIU on investigation status, so the freeze continues by rule. Second, substantively, blanket-blocking every unregistered site risks becoming overreach. Their proposed fix: prioritize blocking based on confirmed user harm, using the same evidentiary standard already used for fraud sites, police crime recognition reports or internal investigation documentation, applied consistently to offshore crypto exchange sites too. FIU said it would review internally and report back. This is the same regulatory apparatus that just pulled OKX and Bybit from Google Play essentially admitting it doesn't have a coherent, consistent standard for who gets blocked and why, Binance staying accessible looks less like a deliberate policy choice and more like a technicality nobody has revisited since 2021.

Toss Payments joined the government's deposit token payment infrastructure project as preferred bidder for the PG (payment gateway) role, the same consortium NH and KB joined earlier this month, now with the full participant list clearer: 9 banks, 8 PG companies, and 2 large merchants, run by the Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute. Toss Payments' specific job is connecting the deposit token payment network to merchants as the PG, building the integration so existing merchant payment setups can accept deposit tokens without new terminals or system rebuilds, consumers pay through bank-issued deposit token wallet apps on their end. The pitch is the same one NH and KB made: deposit tokens settle simultaneously with payment, cutting merchant settlement time from the current 1-3 days down to near-instant, with participating institutions also validating potential fee reductions and improved merchant cash flow. Toss Payments completed the project kickoff briefing with the Ministry of Science and ICT and KISA in June, and joined the joint inter-agency launch ceremony on July 22, the same event KB referenced. Detailed development work and scheduling with other participants starts this half.

Samsung SDS is building stablecoin infrastructure, crypto-based financial SI, and AI-driven payments with Dunamu, its first concrete detail on what the May equity stake actually means. CEO Lee Jun-hee said on today's Q2 earnings call that the Dunamu investment "is not a simple financial investment, but a strategic investment to enter the digital asset infrastructure business," aimed at combining Dunamu's blockchain operating expertise with Samsung SDS's IT services, AI, cloud, and security capabilities. This follows Samsung SDS's participation, alongside Samsung Securities and Samsung Card, in the ~4% Dunamu stake acquisition back in May, which at the time was described only broadly as strategic positioning. Today's call is the first time Samsung has named specific business lines, stablecoins, SI, and AI payments, rather than just holding equity, with Lee saying business models will get further defined through ongoing discussions with Dunamu.

Korea's crypto tax is going ahead as planned, no more delays. Deputy PM Koo Yun-chul confirmed to the National Assembly today that the exemption ends this year and taxation starts in 2027, with any fixes to come after the fact, not before. The pushback came from PPP's Kim Sang-hoon on a specific structural flaw: crypto gains are taxed as "other income," not capital gains, so losses can't carry forward. His example, lose ₩10M this year, gain ₩5M next year, you're still down ₩5M overall, but that ₩5M gain gets taxed anyway since last year's loss can't offset it. He pointed out the US, UK, and Australia all treat crypto as capital gains and allow loss carryforward, and asked why Korea doesn't. Koo's response was that stock investing doesn't get loss carryforward in Korea either, and that the "other income" classification comes with its own tradeoff, a flat 20% rate with some deductions. He said he's open to revisiting carryforward after the tax actually starts, but switching to a full capital-gains system would mean rethinking Korea's entire capital markets tax structure, not just crypto. Kim also flagged a timing problem: the international system for automatically sharing crypto transaction data across countries (CRS) doesn't start until 2028 for most countries and 2029 for the US. His argument, taxing before that infrastructure exists is premature and unfair to investors. Koo didn't really engage with that point directly, just repeated that the exemption ends this year as written into law, and adjustments will come later if needed.

FSC Chairman Lee Eok-won told the newly-reconstituted Financial Services Committee today that a unified Digital Asset Basic Act will be filed, with the government committing again to completing legislation this year. This is the first FSC briefing since the committee's full lineup was finalized on July 23. The consolidated bill covers three areas: industry (defining digital asset business categories, conduct rules, stablecoin issuance/distribution framework), market (exchange entry requirements, disclosure system for issuance and trading), and users (financial-institution-grade internal controls and system stability requirements). No timing or filing method confirmed yet. Corporate market opening is moving in parallel and explicitly tied to the same legislation. FSC's crypto division head said he's personally positive about corporate market access happening within the year, that would mark the first meaningful loosening of the "geumga-bunri" financial-crypto separation rule in nine years, dating back to 2017 under the Moon administration. Ten separate digital asset and stablecoin bills are currently pending in the Assembly, from DP's Min Byung-deok (first filed June 2024), Ahn Do-gul, Kim Hyun-jung, Lee Kang-il, Park Sang-hyuk, and PPP's Kim Eun-hye, Kim Jae-seop, Choi Bo-yoon, Lee Sung-kwon, and Kim Sung-won. New committee chair Yoo Dong-soo announced subcommittees will now meet twice monthly per each of two subcommittees, an explicit speed commitment, after Park Min-kyu noted this committee had the fewest bills passed of any committee in the previous Assembly half.

Coupang and Woori Bank completed a KRW stablecoin payment and settlement PoC, described as Korea's first end-to-end validation covering payment, real-time settlement, and on/off-ramp all in a live-equivalent environment. The tested flow: Coupang Eats order payment routes through a KRW stablecoin and settles to merchants in real time. Woori Bank handled the on/off-ramp piece, linking digital wallets to bank accounts to convert between stablecoin and fiat. The infrastructure choice is notable, this ran on Tempo, a stablecoin-specific L1 where Coupang is an early partner and investor. Tempo's other backers include Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Deutsche Bank, so Coupang isn't just testing someone else's rail, it has a stake in the underlying chain itself. The stated benefit for small merchants is faster cash turnover and lower financial costs versus traditional settlement, and Coupang flagged a broader ambition, if the stablecoin ends up circulating and being used like actual currency across Coupang's ecosystem and beyond, that expands the distribution loop further.