Korea Investment & Securities (KIS) and OKX Ventures announced on May 29, 2026 that they are each acquiring roughly 19.6% stakes in Seoul-based exchange Coinone, paying approximately 80 billion Korean won (about $53 million) apiece. The two buyers are acquiring shares partly through secondary purchases from Coinone's CEO Cha Myung-hoon and Com2uS Holdings, and partly through newly issued shares. The transaction is pending regulatory approval.

After the deal closes, the four principal disclosed shareholders will be Cha at 27.8%, Com2uS Holdings and its affiliates at 25%, and KIS and OKX Ventures at 19.6% each, together accounting for approximately 92.6% of disclosed post-deal ownership. The implied valuation for the entire company works out to roughly $270 million. That figure is notable because Coinone reported an operating loss of 6.34 billion won in 2025, though the company also posted a net profit of 2.68 billion won that year, meaning buyers are paying for strategic position rather than near-term earnings certainty.

Coinone is one of a small number of exchanges currently registered as a virtual asset service provider (VASP) under South Korea's Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU), the regulatory body that licenses crypto businesses in the country. Among the other registered platforms are Upbit, Bithumb, and Korbit. Holding that registration, along with a mandatory information security certification and a real-name banking partnership with Kakao Bank, makes Coinone part of a very short list of platforms legally permitted to offer Korean won trading to retail customers. That infrastructure cannot be easily replicated, which helps explain the premium buyers are willing to pay.

For OKX Ventures, the investment arm of global exchange OKX, the Coinone stake is its first licensed foothold in South Korea. OKX has never held a domestic VASP license and has been unable to offer perpetual futures trading to Korean users directly. The approach mirrors a strategy Binance used in 2023 when it acquired Seoul-based Gopax as a local regulatory gateway rather than applying for a license from scratch. Industry observers cited by FinanceFeeds noted the possibility that OKX may seek greater operational influence over Coinone over time as regulations around major shareholder stakes in domestic exchanges continue to evolve. That prospect sits directly against a proposed 20% maximum individual shareholder cap on cryptocurrency exchange ownership currently under legislative review in South Korea. OKX and KIS are acquiring their stakes at precisely that ceiling, meaning any future expansion of influence would require the cap to change. For KIS, part of Korea Investment Holdings, one of South Korea's largest brokerage groups, the deal reflects what the Seoul Economic Daily has described as a sector-wide push by traditional financial firms to acquire crypto exchange stakes following regulatory easing by the Financial Services Commission (FSC).

The FSC under Chairman Lee Eok-won effectively ended a nine-year informal policy that had barred financial institutions from owning stakes in crypto exchanges. The chairman has publicly said there is "a need to comprehensively examine global market changes." New rules now allow listed companies and professional investors to allocate up to 5% of their equity capital to digital assets listed on the country's top five regulated exchanges. The Coinone deal is one of several transactions that followed quickly. Kakao, formerly the dominant shareholder in Dunamu, sold approximately $1.5 billion in Dunamu equity in under a month, opening up the large stakes that institutional buyers then moved to absorb. Within the same week, Samsung affiliates paid roughly $446 million for a combined 4% stake in Dunamu, the operator of South Korea's dominant exchange Upbit. Hana Bank separately acquired a 6.55% stake in Dunamu for approximately $670 million, and Hanwha Investment & Securities increased its Dunamu stake to 9.84%. Mirae Asset is pursuing a 92% stake in Korbit. Tiger Research, which tracks institutional activity in the Korean market, wrote that "the current partnership race is less about market capture and more about regulatory design."

Coinone handles roughly 1.8% of South Korea's domestic trading volume. Its Q1 2026 trading volume came in at 20.8 trillion won (approximately $16 billion), modest compared to Upbit's 229 trillion won over the same period. Overall market volume across the country's five regulated exchanges fell about 20% quarter over quarter in Q1 2026, and Tiger Research estimates a roughly 48% decline year over year. The volume data points to a deal environment shaped by strategic and regulatory positioning rather than market expansion.

Looking ahead, Coinone has indicated plans to expand into stablecoins and tokenized securities, two product categories that South Korea is actively legislating. The FSC is expected to release guidelines for tokenized securities in July 2026, targeting a fully regulated blockchain capital market by February 2027. Phase 2 of the Digital Asset Basic Act, covering stablecoins and cross-border crypto activity and expected to be introduced in Q1 2026, is also advancing through the legislative process. For developers and builders watching the region, Tiger Research framed the stakes plainly: "Crypto exchanges are now seen not merely as trading fee platforms but as critical customer touchpoints" for distributing stablecoins, custody services, and security tokens. For users and projects in markets such as India, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where regulators are still debating whether to allow traditional finance firms to own crypto exchanges, South Korea's experiment is already functioning as a live reference model.