Project Hangang CBDC Phase 2 to onboard 500K users in Korea

| coingeek.com
South Korea’s central bank, the Bank of Korea (BoK), is advancing Project Hangang CBDC Phase 2. The live pilot will involve nine banks and cap institutional deposit-token testing at 500,000 users, with a possible start as early as September if onboarding and development stay on track. Phase 2 expands the April–June 2025 pilot results: BoK estimates about 81,000 wallet creations, but only 42% of users actively spent. The first phase covered roughly 12,000 merchants and logged 114,880 transactions. BoK says Project Hangang CBDC Phase 2 aims to feel more like real banking. Upgrades include biometric fingerprint approvals, person-to-person transfers, automatic top-ups, recurring auto-payments, cash receipt generation, and interest payments. It will also test programmable tokens to deliver government subsidies directly to digital wallets rather than vouchers or checks. Programmable deposit tokens will include spending rules and restrictions to improve oversight and reduce misuse. For crypto traders, this matters because Project Hangang CBDC is pushing a “middle ground” concept between a CBDC and a stablecoin-like tokenized deposits model. While it’s not a direct market token, it reinforces policy momentum toward regulated, programmable money—something that can shape sentiment around tokenized deposits and compliance narratives in the broader crypto ecosystem.
Neutral
This is a real-money infrastructure and policy rollout, not a new tradable crypto asset, so direct price impact on major cryptocurrencies is likely limited. In the short term, traders may see mild sentiment effects if “tokenized deposits” or “programmable money” narratives gain attention, but the lack of a specific listed token reduces the probability of a strong, immediate market move. In the long term, however, the BoK’s Phase 2 feature set (programmable subsidy delivery, spending rules, biometric approvals, automated payments) can strengthen perceptions that regulated CBDC-style rails are approaching commercialization. That could subtly support broader crypto interest in compliant tokenization use cases—yet it also highlights state control and programmability concerns, which can counterbalance bullish sentiment. Net effect: no direct linkage to a specific cryptocurrency’s cash flows or supply/demand, so the market impact should remain largely neutral.