In brief
- Crypto-friendly Lee Jae-myung won the presidency in South Korea last week.
- He is now pushing ahead with a stablecoins bill.
- If approved, the law would allow companies to issue their own stablecoins.
South Korea’s newly elected president pushed ahead with a crypto-friendly agenda on Tuesday, announcing new stablecoin legislation, according to reports.
As first reported by Bloomberg, Lee Jae-myung, proposed the Digital Asset Basic Act—a law which, if approved, will allow companies to issue stablecoins if they have 500 million won ($366,749) in equity capital.
Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value on a non-volatile asset—typically the U.S. dollar. Such cryptocurrencies run on a number of different blockchains and are supposed to be backed by reserves of the stable asset.
Crypto is popular in South Korea and Jae-myung—who won the election last week—is friendly toward the space. The Democratic Party leader in 2022 experimented with NFTs during his previous campaign and has said he will allow Bitcoin ETFs to trade in the country.
He has also proposed launching a won-pegged stablecoin to prevent capital flight, saying that the country urgently needs “to prevent national wealth from leaking overseas.”
And the Bank of Korea last month said it was considering issuing deposit tokens on a public blockchain to coexist with private stablecoins.
Stablecoins are a hot topic in the crypto industry: Regulators have been fighting over how to control the assets for years; President Trump backs one digital token; and lawmakers in Washington will vote on a stablecoin bill this week.
A number of high-profile businesses and banks are also weighing—or have already—launched stablecoin products.
Edited by James Rubin
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