South Korea Eyes Virtual Asset Accounts for 3,500 Firms as Central Bank Plans AI-Driven Deposit Token Test in 2026

Factblock CEO and Korea Blockchain Week organizer Andrew Park said South Korea’s crypto market is moving away from retail trading and toward institutional digital finance. Park said the focus for global financial institutions and companies has shifted from tokens, exchanges and prices to custody, tokenization, stablecoins, payment and settlement infrastructure, and regulatory compliance. The Financial Services Commission has proposed a framework that would open corporate virtual asset accounts to about 3,500 listed companies and registered professional investors. South Korea’s National Assembly has also passed amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act, bringing tokenized real-world assets and security tokens into a single legal framework. The Bank of Korea has completed an initial test of Project Hangang, its real-world deposit token project, and plans to begin a second-phase institutional test by the end of 2026. Related technical experiments have used wholesale deposit tokens to allow AI agents to carry out automated conditional trades. The report was published by Bitcoin.com News.