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Mirae Asset Financial Group plans to build a 150 trillion won ($109 billion) digital asset business around Digital X, the cryptocurrency exchange it acquired and rebranded from Korbit, founder and chairman Park Hyeon-joo said at an employee event in Seoul on August 26.
Park set a 2027 target for the division to turn profitable and said the group is considering injecting up to 300 billion won in additional capital, with a possible third-party allotment of 200 billion to 300 billion won in the first quarter of 2027 depending on how quickly earnings improve.
Mirae Asset Consulting, a nonfinancial affiliate of the group, acquired a 97.15% stake in Korbit in July for a cumulative 141.4 billion won, after South Korea's Fair Trade Commission cleared the deal on July 9. It was the first time an affiliate of a Korean financial conglomerate had taken control of a domestic crypto exchange. Korbit, founded in 2013 as the country's first cryptocurrency exchange, held just 0.5% of South Korea's crypto trading market in 2025, well behind leaders Upbit and Bithumb. The company was renamed Digital X following the acquisition, and has since begun waiving trading fees on all won-denominated assets through August 2027 in an apparent push for market share against those larger rivals.
Park described Digital X as the core pillar of "Mirae Asset 3.0," the group's strategy for linking traditional and digital assets on a single platform. He said the business will focus on four areas: cryptocurrency, stablecoins, real-world assets and security token offerings, with plans to tokenize physical assets including gold, silver and electricity alongside custom financial products. "Our initial goal is to make Digital X a core pillar of Mirae Asset 3.0 and grow the digital asset business to 150 trillion won by leveraging the group's 1,500 trillion won in client assets," Park said.
The push builds on groundwork Mirae Asset had already laid before the Korbit deal. In January, Mirae Asset Securities issued 100 billion won in digital bonds through a private placement, becoming the first financial institution in Asia to do so. The bonds, denominated simultaneously in Hong Kong dollars and US dollars, were processed on HSBC's Orion platform and automated issuance, coupon payments and redemption through blockchain infrastructure, with Mirae Asset Securities' Hong Kong unit acting as co-arranger. The firm has also completed the first phase of a security token offering platform under South Korea's regulatory sandbox.
Digital X's role in the broader strategy is distribution as much as trading. Mirae Asset has said directly that the exchange is not built to overtake Upbit or Bithumb on volume, positioning it instead as the mechanism by which tokenized products, from stablecoins to real-world asset offerings, reach a client base built over more than three decades. Whether the 150 trillion won target is reachable will depend on Digital X establishing sustainable earnings and generating actual demand for tokenized financial products, both of which remain unproven at this stage.
