South Korea Is Opening Crypto to Corporations But May Leave Stablecoins Out

South Korea’s financial regulator is drafting guidelines that would allow listed companies to invest in digital assets for the first time since 2017, with dollar-pegged stablecoins like USDT and USDC potentially excluded from the permitted list.

What the Guidelines Would Allow

The Financial Services Commission is preparing what it calls Corporate Virtual Currency Trading Guidelines. The framework would permit listed companies to allocate up to 5% of their equity capital into digital assets, limited to the top 20 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Ethereum would qualify. Stablecoins would not, at least under the current draft.

That 5% cap is a meaningful constraint. It limits exposure without blocking participation entirely, which is consistent with how regulators typically approach first-generation institutional frameworks.

Why Stablecoins Are Being Left Out

The reasoning has two parts. The first is practical risk management. Regulators want to prevent what the FSC describes as indiscriminate investment during the early stages of institutional market entry. De-pegging events, where a stablecoin loses its dollar peg, represent a specific risk that regulators appear unwilling to introduce at the corporate level before the broader framework is established.

The second reason is legal. Under South Korea’s current Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, stablecoins are not recognised as legal payment instruments. Allowing companies to hold them as investment assets while simultaneously prohibiting their use in commercial trade or cross-border payments would create a direct legal contradiction. The exclusion resolves that conflict by simply deferring the stablecoin question to later legislation.

A Conflicting Signal From the Regulator Itself

The stablecoin exclusion is not confirmed. An FSC official stated on March 7 that a final consensus has not been reached and called media reports of a definitive ban “groundless.” Several South Korean outlets had reported the exclusion as settled.

That discrepancy matters. The guidelines are still in draft form, and the stablecoin question appears genuinely unresolved rather than decided. Reporting it as final overstates where the process actually stands.

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What Comes Next

A broader legislative framework called the Digital Asset Basic Act is expected later in 2026. That act may introduce a Korean-style stablecoin model, with banks potentially required to hold a 51% majority stake in any local stablecoin issuance entity. That structure would give Korean financial institutions direct control over stablecoin infrastructure rather than leaving it to foreign issuers like Tether or Circle.

The corporate trading guidelines and the Digital Asset Basic Act are separate tracks moving in parallel. The near-term framework opens institutional access to crypto. The longer-term legislation addresses stablecoins as a distinct regulatory category.

Both are proposals at this stage. Neither is law.

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