Asia Market Daily: South Korea's top court proposes rules for civil enforcement of crypto assets (2026/7/6)

South Korea's Supreme Court has issued a legislative notice for the partial revision of the Civil Execution Rules, establishing a framework for the civil enforcement of virtual assets. After a public comment period, the new rules will take effect from October 1. The revision covers the enforcement and liquidation of claims for the transfer of digital assets, as well as the enforcement of digital assets themselves. Once a court seizure order is issued, third-party debtors are prohibited from transferring assets to the debtor, and the debtor is barred from disposing of the rights. Seized assets can be liquidated through a transfer order or sale order, which may be executed by entrusting a virtual asset service provider, transferring to an executor's account for sale, or exchanging for easily liquidated digital assets before sale.

South Korean chip giant SK Hynix is planning to raise 43 trillion won ($29 billion) through an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listing in the United States. The move aims to attract a broader base of AI-focused investors amid the global surge in demand for memory chips used in artificial intelligence computing. The listing, which could be the largest ever foreign stock offering, comes as SK Hynix competes with Samsung and Micron in the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market essential for Nvidia's AI processors. The offering targets investors currently unable to access South Korea's stock market directly.

Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has committed to reforming the Virtual Asset Platform Practitioner Exam (CVAP), according to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association. After a meeting with regulators including the Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury and the SFC's Executive Director for Intermediaries, the SFC pledged to split the exam from its course, improve study materials, and lower exam fees. The association will follow up on the timeline and continue discussions on practical issues such as private fund self-custody guidelines, the boundary between tech services and regulated activities, and the regulatory framework for VA payments. The push reflects Hong Kong's ongoing efforts to streamline its virtual asset licensing regime.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a proposal for 'The Extremely Lean Chain', outlining how to aggressively compress the state requirements of the Ethereum consensus layer. The plan shifts responsibilities to validators, who would manage and periodically prove their state via ZK proofs, eliminating per-epoch processing burdens and potentially supporting millions of validators. Core mechanisms include removing validator public keys from on-chain state, replacing real-time rewards and penalties with daily STARK proofs, and achieving strong anonymity through daily complete re-randomization of validator identities via ZK-STARKs. Withdrawal addresses would only be exposed at the time of withdrawal, unlinking them from deposits and on-chain activity. This is part of Ethereum's 'lean' upgrade path over the next three to four years.

South Korea's media regulator will give prediction market platform Polymarket an opportunity to respond before deciding whether to take corrective action. The regulator is reviewing whether Polymarket's services constitute illegal gambling under South Korean law. The outcome could set a precedent for how decentralized prediction markets are treated in one of Asia's largest crypto economies. South Korea has strict anti-gambling laws, and the case highlights the regulatory challenges facing blockchain-based platforms that allow users to bet on real-world events.

Hong Kong's Financial Secretary Paul Chan highlighted the city's dominant role in offshore yuan business, with over 70% of global offshore yuan payments and settlements processed through Hong Kong. The local banking system's yuan interbank settlement volume has exceeded 41 trillion yuan, equivalent to about 2 trillion yuan daily. With China expanding high-level opening and enterprises accelerating globalization, demand for yuan in cross-border trade and investment is expected to rise further. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, with assistance from the People's Bank of China, has introduced a yuan funding arrangement to lower banks' costs in obtaining yuan, supporting trade finance and corporate operations. The developments reinforce Hong Kong's position as the world's leading offshore yuan hub, with potential implications for yuan-denominated crypto markets.

Tencent's AI lab Hunyuan has released Hy3, an upgraded foundational model that has significantly improved reasoning, agent, and long-context task performance. Hy3, based on a preview version, enhanced the quality and diversity of post-training data and expanded reinforcement learning compute scale, achieving results comparable to flagship models from larger peers that are 2 to 5 times its parameter size. The model has been open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub, Hugging Face, ModelScope, and GitCode. Tencent also reduced API prices for Hy3 on its cloud service: 1 yuan per million input tokens and 4 yuan per million output tokens. The move intensifies AI competition in China and could lower costs for developers building crypto-related AI applications.

South Korea's top five crypto exchanges—Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax—saw a 44% decline in new token listings in the first half of 2026, totaling 117 new coins compared to 210 in the same period last year. At the same time, delisted tokens surged 258% from 19 to 68, indicating a shift toward stricter listing standards and a preference for culling low-liquidity, underperforming assets. The net addition of new coins fell about 74% year-over-year. The trend reflects a maturing market where exchanges are prioritizing quality over quantity, potentially reducing speculative trading volumes but enhancing investor protection in the regulated Korean market.

Vietnamese police have seized over 350 kilograms of gold and silver and frozen transactions involving eight properties valued at 200 billion Vietnamese dong in connection with the ONUS cryptocurrency platform fraud case. More than 300 related bank accounts have been suspended. In March, police prosecuted eight defendants on charges of using computer and telecommunication networks to appropriate property and launder money. The case underscores Vietnam's crackdown on crypto-related crime and the growing scale of digital asset scams in Southeast Asia.

The Payment & Clearing Association of China issued a warning on preventing cross-border gambling fraud involving virtual currency top-ups. The association reminded the public that cross-border gambling using virtual currencies is highly risky and illegal, emphasizing that both participating in gambling and providing fund settlement services for gambling activities are prohibited. The warning highlights the Chinese government's continued stance against crypto-related gambling and its efforts to safeguard financial security, indirectly reinforcing the broad ban on crypto trading within mainland China.