韩国金融机构未进入21家全球金融机构美元稳定币发行联盟

South Korean financial firms have been left out of talks among large global banks in the United States, Europe and Japan to jointly issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin, excluding Korean lenders from a forum that could shape the future direction of stablecoins. Market watchers worry that Korea, already outside the club of reserve-currency nations, will end up on the periphery of digital assets as well.
Twenty-one large global financial firms, including Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo and UBS, said on the 1st that they will establish a company in the second half of this year to issue a dollar stablecoin. The goal is to build a payment network and issue the coin in the first half of next year. The name of the new entity will be announced later.
U.S. institutions are leading the overall framework. Three of the country's "Big Four" banks have agreed to take part. Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Fidelity Investments and PNC Financial Services are also joining.
By country, participants span North America, Europe and Asia. Canada's Scotiabank and TD Bank Group are involved, along with Lloyds Banking Group of the United Kingdom. Spain's Banco Santander and BBVA, Germany's Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, and France's Crédit Agricole are also on the list. The Netherlands' Rabobank and Switzerland's UBS are lending support to the dollar stablecoin issuance. In Asia, Japan's MUFG Bank and the United Arab Emirates' Sirius International Holding are taking part. South Africa's Standard Bank has also joined.
The stablecoin they issue will be pegged one-to-one to the dollar and circulate on public blockchains. Public blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana are open networks where anyone can verify transaction records, rather than the internal networks of a specific financial firm. The group plans to expand across cross-border remittances and cryptocurrency payments as well as wholesale, retail and institutional finance. It also plans to diversify issuance into stablecoins backed by other Group of Seven currencies, such as the euro.
The move owes much to reduced regulatory uncertainty in the United States and Europe. The GENIUS Act, a stablecoin regulation law, has been enacted in the United States, while the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation is in force in the European Union. As institutional frameworks take shape, established financial companies have more room to enter the digital asset market directly.
The stablecoin market is currently split largely between Tether and Circle. According to cryptocurrency analytics platform DefiLlama, total stablecoin market capitalization stood at $303.9 billion (about 415.7 trillion won) as of 2:18 p.m. that day. Tether's USDT accounts for 60% of the total and Circle's USDC about 24%. Established large banks are stepping in to break that structure.
The problem lies with Korea. Not a single Korean bank has secured a place in the dollar stablecoin network that large U.S. and European banks are seeking to build. Shinhan Financial Group, KakaoBank and K Bank have signed on to "Open Standard," but that is a broad partner alliance involving some 140 global companies.
European financial firms alone are building a separate alliance. Thirty-seven European financial companies have set up a joint venture called Qivalis and plan to launch a euro stablecoin within this year. Some banks, such as Spain's BBVA, are participating in both the dollar and euro stablecoin consortiums. The approach is seen as a strategy to secure a stablecoin backed by their own currency while also widening access to the dollar payment network.
Korea, by contrast, has made little progress on enacting a framework act on digital assets that would provide the legal basis for issuing and circulating a won-based stablecoin. The Financial Services Commission and the ruling party plan to introduce a consolidated bill this month based on the government proposal, but differences remain over who should be allowed to issue such coins. With changes in the deputy prime minister and finance minister overseeing economic policy and in the presidential chief of staff for policy, a new team will also need to review the digital asset legislation again.
Industry officials worry that further delays in legislation could leave domestic financial companies serving merely as distribution and exchange channels for foreign dollar stablecoins, rather than building their own stablecoin ecosystems. One official in the financial industry said discussions on legislation should be sped up as much as possible.