Crypto Push In Korea: Hana Financial And Standard Chartered Unveil New Deal

bitcoinistPublicado em 2026-03-16Última atualização em 2026-03-16

Resumo

One of South Korea's largest financial groups, Hana Financial, has partnered with UK-based Standard Chartered to strengthen cooperation in global finance and crypto assets. The two institutions signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on March 15, aiming to develop stablecoins and digital assets as new growth drivers alongside their traditional banking operations. The agreement covers areas including stablecoins, deposit tokens, and tokenized financial instruments. Hana’s Chairman, Ham Young-joo, emphasized the importance of building a comprehensive ecosystem for won-denominated stablecoins, from issuance to circulation. Standard Chartered’s CEO, Bill Winters highlighted South Korea’s key role in Asian financial markets. This partnership reflects a broader trend among major Korean banks to develop regulated digital asset infrastructure—such as stablecoins and tokenized bonds—rather than focusing on retail crypto speculation. Both institutions have prior experience in the digital asset space, with Hana having established a crypto custody venture and Standard Chartered actively involved in tokenization projects and stablecoin initiatives in Asia.

One of the largest South Korean financial conglomerates has partenerd up with a major UK-based global bank to deepen cooperation in global finance and crypto assets.

A Transnational Crypto Deal

Incumbents are keen not to be left behind on the crypto curve, so much so that some of them are now joining forces. That seems to be the case for Hana Financial Group and Standard Chartered Group as on March 15th they announced the signing of a MOU (memorandum of understanding). By teaming up, the two lenders aim to turn stablecoins and other digital assets into a new growth engine alongside their existing international banking business.

Chairman Ham of Han Financial Group and Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered Group, at the signing ceremony in Seoul. Source: Seoul Economic Daily.

According to The Korea Times, the signing ceremony took place at Hana’s Bank’s headquarters on March 13th. It was attended by Ham Young-joo, Chairman of Hana Financial Group, and Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered Group. Seoul Economic Daily reports that Ham and Winters exchanged views on cooperation in global and digital assets. Chairman Ham stated that:

The partnership between Hana Financial Group and Standard Chartered Group, leveraging their extensive global networks and diverse financial know-how, will serve as a strong competitive edge in the global financial sector. We will create new growth opportunities by generating synergies in future financial domains, including digital assets.

Winters emphasized on the capital importance that South Korea has in Asian financial markets, regarding the country as a “key hub”.

Shared Goals

The MOU covers stablecoins, deposit-token experiments, and future tokenized instruments, tying in Hana’s domestic stablecoin plans and pilots.

The Seoul Economic Daily contextualizes this move with Chairman Ham views of stablecoins as “core future business”. His goal with Hana Financial points to the building of an “ecosystem encompassing the issuance, distribution, use and circulation of (won-denominated stable) coins”, as he stated in his New Year’s address in January. In 2024, Hana Bank, BitGo, and SK Telecom set up BitGo Korea as the local arm focused on institutional crypto custody. In 2025, the Korean lender had an all-time high net profit of ₩4 trillion.

Chairman Ham and Bill Winters at Hana’s Bank’s headquarters, Source: Seoul Economic Daily.

Standard Chartered already has a growing crypto footprint, from institutional custody services to pilots with tokenized bonds and other blockchain-based assets. The bank has also backed several stablecoin ventures in markets like Hong Kong.

This is not the first time Hana Bank and Standard Chartered team up. In December 2025, the UK-based global bank announced that it was facilitating Hana Securities first venture with digital assets.

A Crypto Race

Instead of chasing pure spot exposure, the South Korea’s big banks are now racing to build compliant rails around stablecoins, tokenized notes, and digital bonds that can plug directly into the regulated financial system, nudging the market away from retail speculation toward more structured corporate and banking participation.

This new deal marks another milestone in the latest wave of efforts by TradFi institutions to keep up with a rapidly evolving digital financial system.

BTC’s price trends to the upside on the daily chart, reaching the $73K. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview

Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview

Perguntas relacionadas

QWhat is the main purpose of the partnership between Hana Financial Group and Standard Chartered Group?

AThe partnership aims to deepen cooperation in global finance and crypto assets, turning stablecoins and other digital assets into a new growth engine alongside their existing international banking business.

QWhen and where did the signing ceremony of the MOU between Hana Financial Group and Standard Chartered take place?

AThe signing ceremony took place on March 13th at Hana Bank's headquarters in Seoul.

QWhat specific areas does the MOU between the two financial institutions cover?

AThe MOU covers stablecoins, deposit-token experiments, and future tokenized instruments, tying in Hana's domestic stablecoin plans and pilots.

QWhat did Chairman Ham of Hana Financial Group identify as a 'core future business' in his New Year's address?

AChairman Ham identified stablecoins as a 'core future business' and expressed his goal to build an ecosystem encompassing the issuance, distribution, use, and circulation of won-denominated stablecoins.

QHow is Standard Chartered Bank involved in the crypto space, according to the article?

AStandard Chartered has a growing crypto footprint, including institutional custody services, pilots with tokenized bonds and other blockchain-based assets, and backing several stablecoin ventures in markets like Hong Kong.

Leituras Relacionadas

Morning Post | Trump Media Group Releases Q1 Financial Report; Top Three DeFi Applications Return Nearly $100 Million in Revenue to Token Holders in 30 Days; Michael Saylor Shares Bitcoin Tracker Info Again

**Title: Daily Briefing | Trump Media Group Releases Q1 Report; Top 3 DeFi Apps Return Nearly $100M to Token Holders; Michael Saylor Signals Potential Bitcoin Buy** **Summary:** Key developments in the past 24 hours include: * **Economic Outlook:** Goldman Sachs has pushed back its forecast for the next two Federal Reserve interest rate cuts to December 2026 and March 2027, citing persistent inflationary pressures from energy costs. This delayed timeline is expected to tighten liquidity flow into risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. * **DeFi & Revenue:** Data from DefiLlama shows that three leading DeFi applications—Hyperliquid, Pump.fun, and EdgeX—collectively distributed $96.3 million in revenue to their token holders over the last 30 days. This trend highlights a shift in the crypto community's focus towards real protocol earnings and sustainable economic models. * **Corporate Bitcoin Moves:** Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy (note: referred to as 'Strategy' in the text, likely a typographical error), has signaled potential upcoming Bitcoin purchases by posting a "Bitcoin Tracker" update, following a pattern that typically precedes the company's official disclosure of new acquisitions. * **Market Integrity:** Prediction market platform Polymarket announced updates to address platform issues, including identifying and banning clusters of accounts involved in "ghost-fill" activities and implementing measures to prevent bulk account creation. * **Regulation:** The Bank of England Governor warned that stablecoin regulation could lead to tensions between US and international regulators. In South Korea, the National Tax Service has launched a pilot program to entrust seized virtual assets to private custody firms for management. * **Meme Token Trends:** GMGN data lists the top trending meme tokens on Ethereum (e.g., HEX, SHIB), Solana (e.g., FWOG, TROLL), and Base (e.g., SKITTEN, PEPE) over the past day. **Financial Note:** Trump Media & Technology Group reported a Q1 loss of approximately $4 billion, primarily attributed to unrealized losses on its Bitcoin and other digital asset holdings.

链捕手Há 28m

Morning Post | Trump Media Group Releases Q1 Financial Report; Top Three DeFi Applications Return Nearly $100 Million in Revenue to Token Holders in 30 Days; Michael Saylor Shares Bitcoin Tracker Info Again

链捕手Há 28m

Telegram Takes Direct Control of TON, Social Traffic Rewrites the Public Chain Narrative

Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced that Telegram will replace the TON Foundation as the core driver and largest validator of The Open Network (TON). Key initiatives include a sixfold reduction in transaction fees, performance upgrades, and improved developer tools within the next few weeks. This marks a strategic shift from Telegram merely providing user access to deeply integrating TON into its platform's core infrastructure. The goal is to transform Telegram's massive social traffic into sustainable on-chain activity. While viral mini-apps like Notcoin have demonstrated Telegram's ability to drive user adoption, TON aims to support frequent, low-value transactions inherent to social platforms—such as tipping, in-app payments, and game rewards. Ultra-low fees and sub-second finality (0.6 seconds) are crucial to making blockchain interactions seamless and nearly invisible within the Telegram user experience. However, Telegram's increased central role raises questions about network decentralization. Durov argues that Telegram's participation will attract more large validators, thereby enhancing decentralization. TON also offers high annual staking rewards (18.8%), aiming to retain capital within its ecosystem. The fundamental challenge for TON is no longer leveraging Telegram's user base, but becoming an indispensable, seamless infrastructure layer for Telegram's everyday applications—moving from an adjacent chain to an embedded utility.

marsbitHá 30m

Telegram Takes Direct Control of TON, Social Traffic Rewrites the Public Chain Narrative

marsbitHá 30m

OpenAI Post-Training Engineer Weng Jiayi Proposes a New Paradigm Hypothesis for Agentic AI

OpenAI engineer Weng Jiayi's "Heuristic Learning" experiments propose a new paradigm for Agentic AI, suggesting that intelligent agents can improve not just by training neural networks, but also by autonomously writing and refining code based on environmental feedback. In the experiment, a coding agent (powered by Codex) was tasked with developing and maintaining a programmatic strategy for the Atari game Breakout. Starting from a basic prompt, the agent iteratively wrote code, ran the game, analyzed logs and video replays to identify failures, and then modified the code. Through this engineering loop of "code-run-debug-update," it evolved a pure Python heuristic strategy that achieved a perfect score of 864 in Breakout and performed competitively with deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in MuJoCo control tasks like Ant and HalfCheetah. This approach, termed Heuristic Learning (HL), contrasts with Deep RL. In HL, experience is captured in readable, modifiable code, tests, logs, and configurations—a software system—rather than being encoded solely into opaque neural network weights. This offers potential advantages in explainability, auditability for safety-critical applications, easier integration of regression tests to combat catastrophic forgetting, and more efficient sample use in early learning stages, as demonstrated in broader tests on 57 Atari games. However, the blog acknowledges clear limitations. Programmatic strategies struggle with tasks requiring long-horizon planning or complex perception (e.g., Montezuma's Revenge), areas where neural networks excel. The future vision is a hybrid architecture: specialized neural networks for fast perception (System 1), HL systems for rules, safety, and local recovery (also System 1), and LLM agents providing high-level feedback and learning from the HL system's data (System 2). The core proposition is that in the era of capable coding agents, a significant portion of an AI's learned experience could be maintained as an auditable, evolving software system.

marsbitHá 1h

OpenAI Post-Training Engineer Weng Jiayi Proposes a New Paradigm Hypothesis for Agentic AI

marsbitHá 1h

Your Claude Will Dream Tonight, Don't Disturb It

This article explores the recent phenomenon of AI companies increasingly using anthropomorphic language—like "thinking," "memory," "hallucination," and now "dreaming"—to describe machine learning processes. Focusing on Anthropic's newly announced "Dreaming" feature for its Claude Agent platform, the piece explains that this function is essentially an automated, offline batch processing of an agent's operational logs. It analyzes past task sessions to identify patterns, optimize future actions, and consolidate learnings into a persistent memory system, akin to a form of reinforcement learning and self-correction. The article draws parallels to similar features in other AI agent systems like Hermes Agent and OpenClaw, which also implement mechanisms for reviewing historical data, extracting reusable "skills," and strengthening long-term memory. It notes a key difference from human dreaming: these AI "dreams" still consume computational resources and user tokens. Further context is provided by discussing the technical challenges of managing AI "memory" or context, highlighting the computational expense of large context windows and innovations like Subquadratic's new model claiming drastically longer contexts. The core critique argues that this strategic use of human-centric vocabulary does more than market products; it subtly reshapes user perception. By framing algorithms with terms associated with consciousness, companies blur the line between tool and autonomous entity. This linguistic shift can influence user expectations, tolerance for errors, and even perceptions of responsibility when systems fail, potentially diverting scrutiny from the companies and engineers behind the technology. The article concludes by speculating that terms like "daydreaming" for predictive task simulation might be next, continuing this trend of embedding the idea of an "inner life" into computational processes.

marsbitHá 1h

Your Claude Will Dream Tonight, Don't Disturb It

marsbitHá 1h

Trading

Spot
Futuros

Artigos em Destaque

Como comprar PUSH

Bem-vindo à HTX.com!Tornámos a compra de Push Protocol (PUSH) simples e conveniente.Segue o nosso guia passo a passo para iniciar a tua jornada no mundo das criptos.Passo 1: cria a tua conta HTXUtiliza o teu e-mail ou número de telefone para te inscreveres numa conta gratuita na HTX.Desfruta de um processo de inscrição sem complicações e desbloqueia todas as funcionalidades.Obter a minha contaPasso 2: vai para Comprar Cripto e escolhe o teu método de pagamentoCartão de crédito/débito: usa o teu visa ou mastercard para comprar Push Protocol (PUSH) instantaneamente.Saldo: usa os fundos da tua conta HTX para transacionar sem problemas.Terceiros: adicionamos métodos de pagamento populares, como Google Pay e Apple Pay, para aumentar a conveniência.P2P: transaciona diretamente com outros utilizadores na HTX.Mercado de balcão (OTC): oferecemos serviços personalizados e taxas de câmbio competitivas para os traders.Passo 3: armazena teu Push Protocol (PUSH)Depois de comprar o teu Push Protocol (PUSH), armazena-o na tua conta HTX.Alternativamente, podes enviá-lo para outro lugar através de transferência blockchain ou usá-lo para transacionar outras criptomoedas.Passo 4: transaciona Push Protocol (PUSH)Transaciona facilmente Push Protocol (PUSH) no mercado à vista da HTX.Acede simplesmente à tua conta, seleciona o teu par de trading, executa as tuas transações e monitoriza em tempo real.Oferecemos uma experiência de fácil utilização tanto para principiantes como para traders experientes.

503 Visualizações TotaisPublicado em {updateTime}Atualizado em 2025.03.21

Como comprar PUSH

Discussões

Bem-vindo à Comunidade HTX. Aqui, pode manter-se informado sobre os mais recentes desenvolvimentos da plataforma e obter acesso a análises profissionais de mercado. As opiniões dos utilizadores sobre o preço de PUSH (PUSH) são apresentadas abaixo.

活动图片