Bank of Korea pushes bank-first stablecoin rules as Digital Asset Bill stalls
The Bank of Korea (BOK) reiterated that won-backed stablecoins should be issued first through a bank-led alliance, not non-bank issuers, as South Korea’s Digital Asset Basic Act remains deadlocked. In submissions to the National Assembly’s finance committee, the BOK also proposed a statutory policy coordination mechanism to align regulators across the stablecoin market.
Meanwhile, the BOK will expand deposit token pilots in H2 for public payments. Use cases include government subsidy payments, vouchers, and EV charging payments. Deposit tokens are tokenized representations of commercial bank deposits on-chain.
Legislation timing has slipped from an earlier Q1 2026 target. The delay is linked to policy disputes over the “bank-first stablecoin” requirement, plus external and political disruptions. Lawmakers are still divided on whether non-banks can participate, and how tokenized real-world assets (RWA) should be regulated under the new framework.
For crypto traders, the bank-first stablecoin stance may limit near-term optionality for non-bank stablecoin ecosystems. The deposit token pilot could support incremental adoption of tokenized payments, but overall regulatory clarity remains delayed.
Neutral
BOK’s reaffirmation of the bank-first stablecoin model is a constraint on issuer optionality and suggests slower progress for non-bank stablecoin ecosystems, which is typically mildly bearish for “variety” of issuance strategies. However, the deposit token pilots introduce a practical on-chain payments pathway backed by commercial bank deposits, which can partially offset sentiment by signaling incremental adoption of tokenized rails. The net effect is therefore neutral: near-term upside from regulatory clarity is limited due to the stalled Digital Asset Basic Act, but adoption signals from deposit tokens could support a gradual, compliant rollout.