- Jeonbuk Bank, part of JB Financial Group, has started lending Korean won to corporate customers against their Bitcoin, the first South Korean bank to do so.
- The pledged Bitcoin stays with a registered custodian, and a default leads to a court-ordered sale under rules that took effect on 1 October.
- The bank says the loans sit within its lending powers under the Banking Act, and it holds no regulatory sandbox designation for them.
Jeonbuk Bank has begun lending Korean won to companies against their Bitcoin, the first South Korean bank to accept the cryptocurrency as loan collateral, financial daily Edaily reported on Monday.
The lender, a unit of JB Financial Group, offers the loans only to corporate customers raising business operating funds. Bitcoin is the only collateral it accepts for now. The bank plans to review opening the loans to more customers and collateral as regulation and demand change.
Jeonbuk chose Bitcoin because it has the largest market value and trading volume of any digital asset, according to Edaily. Its own stress tests on sharp price falls found the coin held up as collateral.
To value the collateral, the bank uses a weighted average of prices from several global exchanges and the median of market volatility indicators. Moreover, pledged Bitcoin sits with a specialist custodian, and Jeonbuk neither owns nor directly controls it. Only virtual asset service providers registered under South Korea’s financial transaction reporting law can act as custodian.
That route opened on 1 October, when amended Civil Enforcement Rules took effect. Those rules, released in draft by the Supreme Court in July, set out how courts can seize crypto, including holdings on exchanges.
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Lending Under Existing Law
A Jeonbuk Bank spokesperson said the loan falls within the lending business a bank may conduct under the Banking Act. The bank has no regulatory sandbox designation for the product, the spokesperson added.
No Korean law explicitly bars crypto as loan collateral, Herald Economy reported. Banks have held back since government measures in late 2017 and early 2018 barred financial firms from crypto-backed lending, the paper said.
Executive vice president Jeong Sang-hoon, who heads the bank’s digital division, said the design lets Jeonbuk use its existing lending and collateral systems without holding crypto. Bank president Park Chun-won had pledged early this year to launch the country’s first crypto-backed loan.
Jeonbuk is also the only regional bank that provides real-name accounts to crypto exchanges.
South Korea barred companies from trading crypto in 2017 and began easing the ban in 2025. Its Financial Services Commission was drafting rules in January to let listed firms invest up to 5% of their equity in digital assets.
In the US, JPMorgan’s plans to let institutional clients pledge Bitcoin and ETH as loan collateral surfaced in October 2025.
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