Hana Financial Group, one of South Korea’s four largest banking conglomerates, announced on May 15 that its flagship Hana Bank has approved the purchase of a 6.55% stake in Dunamu — the operator of Upbit, South Korea’s dominant crypto exchange — from Kakao Investment for approximately 1 trillion Korean won, equivalent to roughly $670 million, marking the largest single investment ever made by a South Korean bank into a digital asset company.
The deal, disclosed in a regulatory filing the same day the Hana Bank board approved it, will make Hana Financial the fourth-largest shareholder in Dunamu, per Korea Herald reporting. The current shareholder structure places founder and Chairman Song Chi-hyung at 25.51%, Vice Chairman Kim Hyoung-nyon at 13.10%, and Woori Technology Investment at 7.2%. Kakao Investment, currently the third-largest shareholder, will retain approximately 4% after the transaction closes.
Beyond The Equity: What The Partnership Covers
The investment is not a passive financial bet. Alongside the share purchase, Hana Financial and Dunamu signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a new generation of services combining traditional banking infrastructure with digital assets, per the Korea Herald.
The joint roadmap covers four areas. The first is blockchain-based foreign currency remittances — the two firms have been building a system to run SWIFT-style international transfers over Dunamu’s proprietary Giwa Chain network since late 2025, completing a proof of concept in February 2026 and signing a three-way commercial testing agreement with POSCO International in April. The second is won-backed stablecoin infrastructure, covering issuance, circulation, and redemption. The third is a hybrid wealth management service that links Upbit’s digital asset infrastructure directly to Hana’s existing fund, pension, and trust platforms. The fourth is international expansion, combining Hana’s global banking network with Dunamu’s blockchain technology to pursue new digital asset businesses and service partnerships abroad, per the Korea Herald and Yonhap.
Hana Financial Group Chairman Ham Young-joo described the investment as a strategic move to accelerate financial innovation in digital assets, with the group aiming to help shape Korea’s blockchain ecosystem and bring the country’s digital asset industry to global standing, per the Korea Herald’s report of his statement.
The Consolidation Race In Korean Crypto
The Hana-Dunamu deal arrives as South Korea’s financial sector moves with unusual speed to establish positions inside the country’s crypto exchange infrastructure. Mirae Asset Consulting’s approximately $96.7 million acquisition of a 92.06% stake in Korbit and the separate discussions between OKX and Korea Investment & Securities to each acquire approximately 20% of Coinone — reported by Yonhap the same day — reflect a broader institutional reconfiguration of who controls South Korea’s regulated digital asset venues.
Dunamu itself reported assets of 13.17 trillion won at the end of last year, generating 709 billion won in net profit on 1.56 trillion won in sales, per Korea Times. Upbit handles more than 80% of South Korea’s domestic crypto trading volume, per Yonhap, making Hana’s new position one of the more strategically consequential equity stakes in the Asian digital asset market.
This development marks a pivotal moment for the nascent sector’s integration with traditional finance in Asia. A trillion-won commitment from a systemically important Korean bank is not a pilot program or an exploratory allocation — it is a structural repositioning that signals the country’s largest financial institutions now view digital asset infrastructure as core to their long-term competitive strategy.
As of this writing, Bitcoin trades at around $80,000, consolidating above its 200-day moving average as institutional positioning across Asia continues to deepen.
Cover image from Grok, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview
