The move positions the company to become an issuance hub for security tokens ahead of new rules taking effect early next year.
The brokerage acquired 159,610 Coinone shares in total, combining 68,894 existing shares held by Com2uS Holdings with 90,716 newly issued shares, in a deal reported at around 80 billion won (US$52.3 million).
The purchase makes Korea Investment & Securities the third-largest shareholder in Coinone at roughly 20 percent, behind Coinone chief executive Cha Myung-hoon at 30.36 percent and Com2uS Holdings at 24.54 percent. OKX secured a stake of about 20 percent as well, joining as a co-third-largest shareholder.
Presenting the partnership at a joint press conference at Coinone's headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, Korea Investment & Securities president Kim Sung-hwan called the deal a strategic rather than a financial investment, "aimed at preempting the role of a hub connecting institutional finance and the crypto-asset market," and cited Coinone's security record, with no incidents since its founding, as the reason for choosing it.
The firm has already sent a request for proposal to market participants to build its own platform for issuing security token offerings, tokenized versions of conventional assets, which it intends to design as an integrated system covering standardized securities such as bonds and money market funds.
The timing is tied to a regulatory shift. Under recently revised legislation, the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act, brokerages will be able to issue and distribute token securities from early next year, a change expected to create a structure in which securities firms handle issuance while crypto exchanges support distribution.
The move also anticipates a roadmap from the Financial Services Commission, which has begun preparing a phased framework for the tokenization of conventional securities and on-chain settlement and is due to release revised subordinate regulations and guidelines in July. A company official said Korea Investment & Securities is separating the two functions, using its own platform for issuance and the KDX consortium for distribution.
Korea Investment & Securities said it plans to combine its traditional financial compliance capabilities with Coinone to strengthen internal controls, while pursuing products built on token securities and stablecoin linkages to target the global digital asset market.
Whether the bet pays off quickly is another question. S&P Global Ratings, in a recent analysis, judged the impact of the Coinone investment on Korea Investment & Securities' risk-adjusted capital ratio, a measure of capital strength relative to risk, to be limited, and said the stake was unlikely to generate substantial profit in the short term.
Its value, the agency concluded, lies in establishing a base for positioning in the digital asset market once the new rules arrive, a payoff measured in years rather than quarters.
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