Won-based digital asset exchanges in South Korea have been shoring up their business foundations by bringing in financial firms as new shareholders. Attention is on whether the exchange market dominated by Upbit and Bithumb will see a shift.

As of July 28, the five largest won-based exchanges ranked by 24-hour trading volume on CoinGecko are Upbit with 72.1 percent, Bithumb with 22.3 percent, Coinone with 4.3 percent, Korbit with 1.0 percent and Gopax with 0.3 percent, the digital asset industry said. Upbit and Bithumb together account for 94.4 percent, forming a clear top two.

The overall scale of trading continues to shrink. From July 1 to 18, average daily bitcoin trading value in won across the five exchanges was 1.39 trillion won, down 40.7 percent from 2.34 trillion won last month.

Against this backdrop, the exchanges ranked third to fifth are joining hands with financial firms to pursue capital expansion and business growth.

Coinone received acceptance from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission on July 22 for a report on a change in major shareholders. Korea Investment & Securities and OKX Ventures each secured a 20 percent stake in Coinone, becoming joint third-largest shareholders after Coinone CEO Cha Myung-hoon (차명훈) with 30.36 percent and Com2uS Holdings with 24.54 percent.

As the first collaboration following Korea Investment & Securities' strategic equity investment in Coinone, Coinone added a new tab on the main screen of its app that allows users to move to Korea Investment & Securities' WTS (web trading system).

Korbit has been brought under Mirae Asset Consulting, an affiliate of the Mirae Asset Group. Mirae Asset Consulting invested 141.37 billion won to acquire 28,495,701 Korbit shares and raised its stake to 97.15 percent.

The Mirae Asset Group relaunched Korbit as 'Digital X' and positioned it as a core pillar. It plans to pursue businesses linking traditional finance and digital assets, including tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA), security tokens (STO) and stablecoins.

Streami, the operator of Gopax, on July 27 appointed Kim Na-young (김나영), formerly head of financial business development at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Korea, as its new CEO. Kim previously served as Bloomberg Korea country head and as a member of the steering committee at the Korea Investment Corporation (KIC).

Gopax plans to focus on normalising management, with resolving the issue of unpaid GoFi obligations as its top priority. Renewal of its virtual asset service provider (VASP) status also remains a task. Kim said, "Repayment of GoFi funds and management normalisation are the top priorities," adding, "I will focus our capabilities on resolving pending issues including VASP renewal."

Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, and Naver Financial are pursuing a comprehensive share exchange. The two companies adjusted the planned date for the share exchange to Dec. 31 in consideration of related licensing and approval procedures. Once the deal is completed, Dunamu will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver Financial.

Bithumb is reported to have held initial discussions with Kiwoom Securities on an equity investment plan. Kiwoom Securities said, "As of now, nothing has been specifically decided or confirmed," adding it is reviewing various options to secure a business base for digital assets.

Lee Jun-ho (이준호), an analyst at Hana Securities, said, "Domestic financial firms and fintech companies are no longer just waiting for institutionalisation and are proactively entering a phase of starting digital asset commercialisation." He said whether the exchanges' new shareholder structure leads to actual service and liquidity expansion will be key to future market reorganisation.