Korean Web3 Policy Decoder - August Week 3 This week's policy: Korea reopens direct crypto trading to corporations. After a de facto nine-year freeze, the Financial Services Commission is clearing listed companies and professional investors to open real-name accounts and trade digital assets on licensed domestic exchanges. It is the most concrete step yet toward institutional participation in Korea's spot market, and the FSC calls corporate access a prerequisite for the next phase of digital-asset law. WHAT IT SAYS Under the FSC's phased roadmap first set out in February 2025, corporations and professional investors may allocate up to 5% of annual equity capital to crypto, limited to the top 20 tokens by market cap on the five major won exchanges and refreshed semiannually. Phase one in 2025 let non-profits and exchanges sell holdings; the final phase opens buying and trading to an estimated 3,500 eligible entities. Whether USD stablecoins such as USDT make the eligible list is still under discussion. WHO WINS Won-based exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone) gain corporate order flow they have never had. Custodians and compliance vendors that can service real-name corporate accounts, KYC, and reporting move to the center. Listed treasuries and asset managers get a regulated onshore route to exposure they were already chasing offshore, where Tiger Research counts roughly $507B in five-year outflows. WHAT'S NEXT Feb 2025: FSC unveils the three-phase corporate access roadmap. 2025: non-profits and exchanges cleared to sell holdings. Early 2026: FSC finalizes the corporate investment guideline (5% cap, top-20). 2026: final phase opens trading to roughly 3,500 listed firms and professional investors. Ahead: USD-stablecoin eligibility, plus the phase-two Digital Asset Basic Act targeted for reintroduction in September. EastPoint's read The ETF debate gets the headlines, but real-name corporate accounts are the faster unlock: they route institutional demand straight onto regulated Korean venues instead of waiting on a Capital Markets Act rewrite. Watch the top-20 eligibility list and the stablecoin decision, they set which assets actually receive the new inflows. For allocators, this is the first clean onshore answer to five years of capital leaving the country. Source: <>