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South Korea needs interim stablecoin rules. Fast. That’s the core message from a new policy report by Hashed Open Research and the Solana Policy Institute, released Wednesday, which pushes Seoul to act before its long-delayed Digital Asset Basic Act ever crosses the finish line.
The report doesn’t mince words. South Korea’s legislative process has stalled badly enough that waiting for the full act to pass before doing anything on stablecoins would leave a dangerous regulatory vacuum. Hashed Open Research and the Solana Policy Institute want temporary licensing guidance put in place now, alongside phased-in stablecoin regulations that give the market some structure to work with while lawmakers keep arguing. The Digital Asset Basic Act was supposed to be South Korea’s sweeping answer to the digital asset question — covering stablecoin issuance, disclosure requirements, market rules, the whole picture. But disagreements among lawmakers, especially around who gets to issue stablecoins and under what conditions, have pushed the timeline into murky territory. No one’s saying publicly when it’ll actually pass.
Not yet, anyway.
The June Symposium and the Bank-Fintech Compromise
On June 23, a symposium brought together lawmakers, legal professionals, and industry participants to hash out where the gaps are. Democratic Party lawmaker Ahn Dogeol floated what’s probably the most politically workable compromise on the table right now: let banks keep majority ownership of stablecoin operations, but allow fintech companies and other non-bank firms to handle the actual day-to-day management. It’s a split-the-difference approach — banks get the control they want, fintechs get the operational role they’ve been pushing for. Whether it’s enough to break the deadlock isn’t clear yet.
Kim Hyobong, a partner at law firm Bae, Kim & Lee, laid out what he sees as the core problem. Financial institutions in South Korea still don’t have clear guidance on what crypto activities they’re actually allowed to do. That’s a basic issue. And it gets more complicated when you layer in the unresolved licensing questions around stablecoin payments, plus the lack of any real standards for stablecoins issued from outside South Korea. Foreign-issued stablecoins are kind of operating in a gray zone right now, and the report treats that as a serious problem that interim rules could start to fix.
Kim also pointed to the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation as a model worth considering. The EU rolled out MiCA in phases, with stablecoin-specific rules going live before the broader framework fully kicked in. South Korea could do something similar — get the stablecoin piece sorted first, build confidence in the market, then bring in the full Digital Asset Basic Act once lawmakers actually agree on it.
Why the Delay Keeps Mattering
Stablecoin adoption across Asia has grown sharply in recent years, and South Korea is no exception. The country has one of the most active retail crypto markets in the world, and stablecoins are increasingly central to how traders and businesses move money around. The longer Seoul waits to put any framework in place, the more the market operates without guardrails — and the more uncertainty piles up for exchanges, payment firms, and anyone trying to build something compliant.
That’s basically the argument Hashed Open Research and the Solana Policy Institute are making. It’s not that the Digital Asset Basic Act is a bad idea. It’s that the wait is too long and the gaps are too wide. Interim measures are a pragmatic bridge, not a permanent solution.
The report also spends real time on the licensing problem. Right now, financial institutions don’t know whether they can legally offer stablecoin-related payment services. That ambiguity isn’t just annoying — it’s a genuine barrier to market development. Banks won’t move aggressively into a space where the rules could change under them, and fintechs can’t build reliable products without knowing what’s permitted. Clearing that up, even temporarily, would probably unlock a lot of activity that’s currently sitting on the sidelines.
And the foreign stablecoin issue is probably underappreciated. South Korea can set whatever rules it wants for domestically issued stablecoins, but if there are no standards for what foreign-issued stablecoins have to meet to operate in the market, the domestic rules don’t really accomplish much. The report wants that closed.
The Ahn Dogeol compromise — banks holding majority ownership, fintechs running operations — is interesting because it mirrors how some other jurisdictions have handled the tension between traditional finance and crypto-native firms. It’s not a clean answer, but it’s a workable one if both sides can live with it.
South Korea hasn’t said when interim regulations might actually get enacted. No timeline, no draft legislation, no formal commitment. The Digital Asset Basic Act itself has no confirmed passage date. So the report is essentially a pressure document — a public push to move faster, framed around the specific risks of moving too slowly.
The June 23 symposium was one data point in a longer conversation. Lawmakers, lawyers, industry players — they’re all talking. Whether that talking translates into actual interim rules before the broader act passes is the open question. Kim Hyobong’s firm, Bae, Kim & Lee, is one of the voices pushing for faster movement on licensing clarity for financial institutions specifically.
South Korea’s stablecoin rules, interim or otherwise, still have no confirmed enactment date.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Hashed Open Research and Solana Policy Institute report recommend?
The report calls for South Korea to introduce temporary licensing guidance and phased-in stablecoin regulations before the Digital Asset Basic Act is finalized, pointing to the EU’s MiCA rollout as a possible model.
What compromise did lawmaker Ahn Dogeol propose at the June 23 symposium?
Ahn Dogeol suggested that banks could retain majority ownership of stablecoin operations while fintech and non-bank firms handle day-to-day management, as a way to bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto-native companies.
