Kim Do-hyung, CEO of fintech company Finhaven, which became the first company in Canada to receive full authorization to issue and distribute token securities (STO), has laid out a vision to realize blockchain-based capital flows by entering the South Korean market. He said South Korea has the potential to secure global leadership in the tokenization market, but pointed to the absence of stablecoin legislation and a regulatory framework centered on private chains as factors undermining business efficiency.
In a recent interview at Samsung Finance Town in Seocho, Seoul during a visit to South Korea, Kim said, "Our vision is to use blockchain technology to help capital flow to more productive places," adding, "South Korea is a country well positioned to do what it takes to ensure productive capital flows to where funds are needed through token securities." He founded the company in Canada in 2017, and after successfully completing a proof of concept (PoC) in the UK in 2018 that tokenized a 30 million pound fund, he entered Canada's regulatory sandbox in late 2020 after roughly two and a half years of testing and technical audits with Canadian securities authorities. He then operated under full authorization for about five years through 2025, during which he also served as an advisor to the British Columbia Securities Commission.
He recently published a book, "The Path of Money, The Future of Money," which explains the concept of token securities and how financial infrastructure works in accessible terms for general readers. He explained that rather than directly translating the English edition, "Simplicity Revolution," into Korean, he rewrote it with Korean readers in mind. At the company level, Finhaven is preparing a plan to use its own platform to support companies and platform developers seeking to enter the token securities business in South Korea. Specific partner names have not yet been disclosed.
On prospects for the South Korean market, he offered a cautious view grounded in experience. In Canada, too, there were attempts to tokenize artworks, real estate, and retail assets, but investors turned away because they did not understand the products. "Rather than tokenizing a 10 billion won (approximately $7.3 million) house, it's easier to sell a 500 billion won (approximately $366.7 million) REIT," he said. "The asset essentially has to be of a certain size for the costs to be manageable." He also noted that issuers often overlook the fact that tokens are about record-keeping, not financial products. He advised that conducting proof of concept with large projects equipped with safeguards, rather than small projects that struggle to secure liquidity, is the way to reduce the probability of accidents and obtain meaningful data.
He cited the lack of a payment mechanism as the biggest constraint. With the Digital Asset Framework Act stalled in the National Assembly, token securities transactions using stablecoins are currently impossible. He explained that reconciliation settlement — aligning transactions with records — is the core of tokenization, but if the payment mechanism remains in the existing system, one side stays on legacy ledgers while the other moves to tokens, making inefficiency unavoidable. He described the current situation as "only half-tokenization."
Regarding the regulatory framework that recognizes only private distributed ledgers as standards and excludes the use of public chains, he said he partly understands the authorities' concerns but stressed that alternatives are needed. The authorities worry that reversing erroneously executed transactions or issuing new keys to wallets whose private keys have been lost is difficult to resolve on public chains, he explained. In response, Finhaven said it is preparing "Finhaven Chain," a public chain specialized for institutional financial markets on the premise of regulatory compliance, and plans to unveil it soon.
He advised a cautious approach to tokenizing listed stocks. While the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has permitted tokenized stock trading in a regulatory sandbox format for five years through an innovation exemption, South Korea does not need to follow suit exactly, in his view. "Do we really need tokenized stocks? If not, it could amount to opening another casino, so it's better to be careful," he said. He also cited concerns that round-the-clock, seven-days-a-week trading would increase the burden on both issuers and investors, and that a gap between tokenized stock prices and the prices of the underlying shares could give rise to arbitrage. His position is that innovation does not come from tokenizing everything unconditionally, but from tokenizing what is essentially needed.
On regulatory approach, he called for a shift from ex-ante controls to ex-post conduct regulation. "Banks, securities firms, asset managers and other professional institutions are mature organizations, and treating them like children makes things considerably harder," he said. "The authorities should set only the broad framework and let mature professional institutions operate within it." If regulators preemptively block paths in the name of regulation by anticipating future events, innovation cannot emerge, he argued.
As part of its business targeting the South Korean market, Finhaven is pursuing carbon credit tokenization and the liquidity of energy and resource assets. In March of this year, it partnered with ZACOOK, a climate and impact finance platform company, and plans to provide a trading infrastructure that ensures the integrity of different carbon credits using a non-fungible token (NFT) contract system. Know-your-customer (KYC), anti-money-laundering (AML), and counter-terrorism-financing (CFT) requirements are capabilities already accumulated in Canada, according to the company. The carbon credit business is also under discussion with parties in Japan, and the company said it is in in-depth talks with one of seven major related companies worldwide.
Resource development is an area Kim has personally experienced, from mine development and production to listing. He said South Korea is a country that absolutely needs resources, but its domestic resource business is dominated by large conglomerates, making it difficult to participate at early stages, and that he is considering ways to secure early positions in resource projects through tokenization. He also hinted at a plan to leverage Canada's status as a resource-rich country to connect the two markets.
South Korea's token securities market is set to launch early next year. Finhaven's move is one of the first cases of an operator that has validated an integrated model covering issuance, distribution, and clearing and settlement in Canada seeking to enter the South Korean market, and is expected to be a variable in the cooperative landscape between South Korean securities firms and platform companies. However, stablecoin legislation and whether public chains will be permitted are cited as key variables that will determine future business performance and regulatory risk.
