Key Points

• South Korea’s Mirae Asset plans to build a 150 trillion won ($109 billion) digital asset business through Digital X, the exchange formerly known as Korbit.
• The strategy spans cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, real-world assets and security token offerings, including plans to tokenize assets such as gold, silver and electricity.
• The expansion follows Mirae Asset Consulting’s acquisition of a 97.15% stake in Korbit for 141.4 billion won, marking a major move by a traditional South Korean financial group into digital assets.

South Korean financial group Mirae Asset is positioning digital assets as a major component of its future financial strategy, targeting a business worth as much as 150 trillion won ($109 billion) through Digital X, its newly rebranded cryptocurrency exchange.

The plans extend well beyond cryptocurrency trading. According to The Korea Times, Mirae Asset intends to develop businesses spanning stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and security token offerings, signaling a broader push to connect traditional financial assets with blockchain-based infrastructure.

Mirae Asset Builds Around Digital X

The strategy follows Mirae Asset Consulting’s acquisition of a 97.15% stake in Korbit in July for a cumulative 141.4 billion won. Korbit was subsequently renamed Digital X.

The acquisition was significant for South Korea’s financial industry because it marked the first time an affiliate of a domestic financial group gained control of a local cryptocurrency exchange.

Mirae Asset founder and chairman Park Hyeon-joo outlined the company’s ambitions at a Digital X employee event in Seoul, saying the initial objective is to make the exchange a core pillar of “Mirae Asset 3.0.”

The move also gives Mirae Asset an established platform from which to pursue a wider digital-asset strategy rather than building a cryptocurrency operation from scratch.

From Crypto Trading to Tokenized Assets

Digital X is expected to focus on four broad areas: cryptocurrency, stablecoins, real-world assets and security token offerings.

The tokenization strategy could be particularly significant because it extends blockchain technology into assets traditionally handled through conventional financial infrastructure. Mirae Asset plans to explore tokenizing physical assets including gold, silver and electricity.

Such applications could allow ownership or economic exposure to traditional assets to be represented digitally, although the practical scale of these initiatives will depend on regulation, market demand and the infrastructure required to support secondary trading and settlement.

The strategy reflects a wider financial-industry shift toward tokenization, where banks and asset managers are increasingly examining blockchain networks as infrastructure for issuing, transferring and settling financial and physical assets.

Digital X Starts With a Small Market Share

Despite Korbit’s position as South Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange, its existing market presence was relatively modest.

The exchange was founded in 2013, but accounted for only 0.5% of South Korea’s cryptocurrency trading market in 2025, according to the country’s Fair Trade Commission.

Mirae Asset therefore faces the challenge of transforming a historically established but relatively small exchange into the foundation of a much larger digital-asset business.

Digital X has already begun using pricing incentives to attract activity. On Monday, the exchange started waiving trading fees across all won-denominated assets, with the zero-fee policy scheduled to continue through Aug. 24, 2027.

The aggressive target suggests Mirae Asset is looking beyond Digital X’s current trading volumes and toward a broader financial ecosystem encompassing tokenized assets and digital money. Whether the platform can grow from a 0.5% market share into a central pillar of the group’s digital strategy will depend on execution, regulatory developments and the adoption of tokenized financial products. For Mirae Asset, however, the Korbit acquisition represents a significant shift from observing the digital-asset market to directly building within it.