Coinone Launches Four-Way Strategic Alliance

Coinone, South Korea's digital asset exchange, announced on Wednesday that it has brought in Korea Investment & Securities and OKX as new strategic investors, forming a four-way alliance with existing major shareholder Com2uS Holdings. The company declared its intention to move beyond being a pure exchange and become a blockchain-based comprehensive financial platform.

Under the investment agreement, Korea Investment & Securities and OKX will each acquire a 20% stake in Coinone, making them joint third-largest shareholders. Coinone CEO Cha Myung-hoon will retain a 30% stake to ensure management continuity, while Com2uS Holdings will maintain its status as a major shareholder.

Shareholder Restructuring and Strategic Roles

Coinone said the shareholder restructuring clearly divides roles among partners. Korea Investment & Securities will contribute compliance and risk management capabilities from traditional finance. OKX will provide global trading technology infrastructure and wallet technology. Com2uS Holdings plans to support service expansion based on global content intellectual property and IT infrastructure.

Korea Investment & Securities CEO Kim Sung-hwan described the deal as a strategic investment to serve as a hub connecting regulated finance and the digital asset market, emphasizing that traditional assets like stocks, bonds and funds are likely to be digitized into digital assets in the future. He cited Coinone's security and compliance capabilities as key reasons for the investment.

OKX CEO Star Xu said the partnership aims to generate synergy in technology, risk management and compliance, applying OKX's 13 years of global exchange experience and technological infrastructure including trading engines, abnormal transaction detection, fraud prevention and wallet management to Coinone.

Com2uS Holdings CEO Jung Chul-ho said the alliance now has four pillars: reliability, global connectivity, content and safe infrastructure. Com2uS Holdings will support Coinone's growth using AI application technology, large-scale IT infrastructure and content IP assets.

Future Plans

Coinone outlined a three-phase plan: in the short term, strengthen competitiveness in South Korea's digital asset market by combining partner capabilities; in the medium term, introduce digital financial products such as tokenized securities (STO) and stablecoins within the legal framework; and in the long term, expand into a global comprehensive financial platform.

Cha Myung-hoon said the investment agreement marks a starting line that opens a new future for South Korea's digital finance, noting that Coinone has been planning since last year to bring in traditional financial companies and a global top-tier exchange as strategic shareholders.