New Year seminar presentation: "Stablecoin institutionalization and wallet infrastructure"

Jonghyup Kim, Chair of the Stablecoin Alliance (CEO of PARAMETA), gave a presentation titled "Stablecoin institutionalization and wallet infrastructure" at the "2026 Digital Convergence Industry Association (DCIA) and Korea Web3 Blockchain Association (KWBA) New Year Seminar," held on January 30, 2026 at DreamPlus Gangnam in Seoul. The seminar was co-hosted by DCIA and KWBA and covered digital asset policy in an era of AI, tokenized securities and stablecoins. The presentation was given in the session "Building the digital asset industry ecosystem, STO and stablecoins."

Key points of the presentation

Kim said that, with the institutionalization of stablecoins drawing near, the time has come to discuss not whether to adopt them but how to implement them, and how to put in place the wallet infrastructure at the center of that. His answer was to secure the reliability of blockchain networks and to build a standardized know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) structure.

The first point is network reliability. He noted that stablecoins account for a growing share of the assets used in digital asset crime, and that blockchain mainnets repeatedly halt because of software errors or spam transactions. For this reason, he said, an assessment framework for evaluating the networks on which stablecoins are issued and circulated is essential at the institutionalization stage. As assessment criteria, he listed technical stability, governance (who changes the network and who is accountable for it), failure recovery and regulatory compliance. Since won-denominated stablecoins aim to be used overseas as well, he said they need to align with foreign regulations and with international standards such as those of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). He added that transaction records and a fund-tracing environment should also be in place so that regulators' investigations can be supported.

The second point is on-chain KYC. He took the view that the current approach, in which checks are performed when users sign up at an exchange, does not reach decentralized finance (DeFi) or self-custodial wallets, leaving regulatory blind spots. As an alternative, he described an approach in which KYC results are recorded on the blockchain while protecting personal information, and services on the same chain share these results. He noted that existing specifications have limitations in handling personal information and in compatibility with other chains. The requirements are to provide transaction-level controls, handling of large allowlists and blocklists, bulk controls in emergencies and protection of personal information, all at once.

Recommendations

Kim said that KYC and AML should not be left to token specifications built separately by each issuer. Expecting won stablecoins to be issued on multiple public blockchains, he said standards and interoperability should be designed from the outset so that the same criteria apply on any chain. Finally, he proposed that, as financial authorities and regulators build the regulatory framework, they develop a Korean on-chain KYC and AML standard together with the private sector, and expressed the hope that Korea would lead in this area, drawing on international standards. The conclusion of the presentation was that allowing only businesses that meet this standard to take part in won stablecoin infrastructure could secure "regulatory clarity and industry growth potential at the same time."