South Korea has reopened the door to corporate cryptocurrency exposure after a near-decade freeze, with new guidance taking effect on January 12, 2026. The framework is designed to bring activity onshore through regulated channels while limiting balance-sheet risk.
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is keeping participation tightly scoped to reduce market and operational spillover. Access is being treated as a controlled expansion, not a blanket green light for corporate treasury speculation.
What the guidance allows
The FSC’s “Virtual Currency Trading Guidelines for Listed Corporations” sets a clear ceiling for exposure and narrows the universe of eligible assets. Listed companies and professional investors can allocate up to 5% of equity capital to digital assets under the guidance.
Eligibility is deliberately conservative on asset selection and execution venue. Holdings are limited to cryptocurrencies that sit within the top 20 by market capitalization and must be traded on domestic exchanges.
The policy intent is practical: enable measured institutional participation without creating concentrated shareholder risk. The 5% cap functions as a governance guardrail that will shape how treasuries size and justify any allocation.
Operational impact and what the market watches next
The guidance also shifts responsibilities onto exchanges in ways that will matter for execution quality and compliance overhead. Domestic venues are required to split large orders and monitor for anomalous activity to reduce market impact and surveillance gaps.
This change sits inside a broader 2026 agenda that includes additional market-structure work. Authorities have been advancing preparations for spot Bitcoin ETFs since 2025 and are targeting potential approvals in 2026.
Stablecoin policy is also moving toward tighter controls in the near term. Stablecoin licensing and minimum-capital requirements are expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2026.
Separately, earlier restrictions that blocked crypto firms from “venture company” status were removed around September 2025, reopening access to incentives and venture capital. That step complements the new corporate-holdings framework by widening the funding and operating perimeter for regulated participants.
From here, the immediate demand signal is likely to concentrate in major tokens already liquid on domestic venues, alongside back-office requirements that institutions care about. Expect pressure for custody, NAV-style reporting, and audit-ready controls as corporate and professional flows test the new rails.