OKX Ventures and Korea Investment & Securities each agreed Thursday to pay 80 billion won ($53 million) for 19.6% stakes in South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinone, the companies announced Friday, May 29. The combined 160 billion won ($106 million) transaction is one of the largest cross-border investments a global crypto firm has made into Korea's digital asset sector.

The deal pairs OKX — the world's second-largest spot exchange by volume — with KIS, one of South Korea's biggest traditional brokerages, in a joint bet on a mid-tier local exchange that is pivoting hard toward stablecoins and tokenized securities. Both investors will become joint third-largest shareholders upon closing, which remains subject to regulatory approval.

How the deal is structured

The investment combines secondary share purchases from existing shareholders with subscriptions for newly issued shares, according to the joint company statement. Following completion, Coinone CEO Cha Myunghun will remain the largest single shareholder at 27.8% and retain management control. Korean mobile gaming conglomerate Com2uS Holdings and its affiliates will hold 25%. OKX Ventures and KIS will sit jointly in third place at 19.6% each.

The transaction formalizes talks first reported by South Korean newswire Yonhap on May 15, which said OKX and KIS were each considering acquiring stakes of roughly 20% in Coinone.

Why Korea's market matters

Gaining a licensed foothold in South Korea is strategically valuable in a way that market cap alone does not explain. Korea consistently ranks among the world's highest per-capita crypto trading volumes. In 2024 the country's five licensed exchanges — Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX — collectively processed trading volumes that rivaled entire national equity markets on peak days. Daily kimchi premium swings during bull markets have for years been a reliable sentiment indicator watched by global traders.

Critically, Korea's Financial Services Commission operates one of the tightest crypto licensing regimes in Asia. Foreign exchanges cannot simply enter the Korean won market; they must operate through a local entity with a real-name account agreement with a domestic bank. Buying into Coinone, which already holds the necessary licenses and banking relationships, buys OKX regulatory access it could not acquire directly.

That asymmetry explains the valuation logic. Coinone is not the dominant Korean exchange — Upbit alone commands the majority of domestic volume. But an existing license, a banking relationship, and a management team the regulator already knows are worth paying a premium to acquire.

What OKX is buying strategically

OKX has publicly described this investment as part of a broader Asia-Pacific expansion push. The Coinone stake gives OKX Ventures a direct presence in a jurisdiction it cannot easily enter as a foreign operator, access to an existing Korean user base, and a partner to develop products the FSC is actively encouraging: won-backed stablecoins and tokenized securities.

Coinone's pivot to those two product lines is not coincidental. South Korea's regulatory dialogue on stablecoins has accelerated in 2025 and 2026, with the FSC working toward a framework for won-denominated digital payment instruments. Tokenized securities — on-chain representations of bonds, equities, and funds — are a second priority the government has signaled support for. A local exchange with ambitions in both areas is well-positioned if those regulatory frameworks mature as expected.

What the KIS co-investment signals

That Korea Investment & Securities is anchoring the same deal alongside OKX is arguably the more structurally significant fact in the announcement. KIS is not a crypto-native firm. It is a full-service brokerage and investment bank with deep retail distribution across Korea. Its willingness to take an equal 19.6% stake in Coinone at the same valuation OKX paid is a direct signal that Korean TradFi is no longer treating crypto as a peripheral asset class.

The co-investment structure means KIS and OKX Ventures arrive at Coinone's cap table with equal standing and presumably aligned interests in the stablecoin and tokenized securities roadmap — precisely the products where a regulated brokerage's distribution network and a global exchange's liquidity infrastructure can be combined into something neither could build alone.

The regulatory gate

Nothing closes until South Korean regulators sign off. The FSC's approval process for major ownership changes at licensed virtual asset service providers is not perfunctory. The regulator will review OKX's global compliance posture, KIS's suitability as a co-investor, and the combined effect on Coinone's operational governance. That review could take months.

Timing matters because the window in which to launch won-denominated stablecoin products and retail tokenized securities under a friendly regulatory posture may not stay open indefinitely. A political or market-driven shift in the FSC's priorities could close the product runway OKX and KIS are betting on. Getting regulatory clearance quickly is in both investors' interest.

Strategic implications

If the deal closes as announced, the Coinone cap table will look like a deliberate convergence of three distinct types of capital: a global crypto exchange (OKX Ventures), a domestic TradFi institution (KIS), and a tech-conglomerate legacy holder (Com2uS). That is a structural alignment of incentives that could move faster on product development than any one of those parties could alone.

For global exchange operators watching Korea, the deal marks a further closing of the window for clean market entry. The five licensed exchanges are now attracting serious strategic capital, and the local consolidation pressure that has been building since Korea introduced its landmark Virtual Asset User Protection Act in 2024 is beginning to show up in M&A. The next large strategic investor in Korean crypto will face an even tighter set of available targets.