Mirae Asset Takes Control of Korbit in Strategic Move into Crypto

Mirae Asset has acquired a controlling interest in Korbit, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, purchasing 26.9 million shares for 133.5 billion won through its consulting subsidiary and raising its holding to about 92%. Sellers in the block trade included strategic investors such as SK Planet, which disclosed a sale of 9.22 million shares for 45.7 billion won. Mirae Asset says the buy aligns with a broader effort to embed digital-asset capability across its financial products and to position itself for tokenized-securities opportunities. The transaction follows a wider wave of consolidation in Korea’s exchange landscape, where finance and technology groups have been moving to acquire regulated trading venues as a way to secure compliant market access. At the same time, Korean policymakers are actively reshaping the regulatory framework for crypto trading venues: draft provisions in the proposed Digital Asset Basic Act would recast exchanges as infrastructure-like entities and seek to limit concentrated ownership—official discussions have suggested a cap in the low double-digits (roughly 15–20%). Lawmakers are also debating higher resilience requirements for related services, including a proposed minimum capital floor for stablecoin issuers. Those policy moves, together with tighter app-store compliance rules for exchange apps, increase the chance that large strategic shareholdings will need transitional remedies or partial unwindings. For Korbit, being part of a major financial group improves access to distribution channels, capital and institutional counterparties, but also raises governance and conflict-of-interest questions that regulators are likely to scrutinize. Competitively, Korbit remains smaller than market leaders by trading volume, so realizing value from the acquisition will depend on integrating product lines, leveraging Mirae Asset’s client base and improving liquidity. In the near term, customers should see limited operational disruption, but the regulatory trajectory creates medium-term ownership uncertainty that could trigger future ownership churn or restructurings. The deal therefore represents both an immediate step toward mainstreaming crypto within Mirae Asset’s business and a bet on how South Korea’s policy framework for exchanges evolves.