South Korea Opens a Staged Path for Corporate Virtual-Asset Trading
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission announced a staged roadmap to reverse the practical prohibition on corporate virtual-asset transactions that had existed since 2017. The plan included a second-half pilot allowing roughly 3,500 listed and professional-investor companies to trade for investment and financial purposes.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission announced on February 13 that corporate participation in the country’s virtual-asset market would be reopened in stages. Since 2017, government policy had in practice prohibited corporate entities from conducting such transactions through real-name bank accounts, leaving one of the world’s most active digital-asset markets largely retail-driven.
The roadmap separated different kinds of participation. During the first half of 2025, law-enforcement agencies, nonprofit organizations, universities, and exchanges would be allowed to sell virtual assets for liquidation purposes. In the second half, approximately 3,500 listed companies and registered professional investors would become eligible for a pilot permitting transactions for investment and financial purposes.
The announcement was not Bitcoin-specific, and it did not instantly create unrestricted corporate Bitcoin trading. Its Bitcoin significance came through market access: BTC was one of the principal assets traded on South Korean exchanges, and the roadmap created a path for corporations to enter a market from which they had effectively been excluded. That made the February decision an important regional stage in the institutionalization of Bitcoin and other digital assets in South Korea.