KRWQ, a won-denominated stablecoin issued overseas that has drawn money laundering concerns, has removed a tokenized Korean government bond from its reserve assets about six months after adding it.
KRWQ's reserves now consist solely of the dollar stablecoins USD Coin (USDC) and frxUSD, according to financial industry sources on the 9th. Stablebond (KTB), a token backed by Korean government bonds that was added to the reserves in February, has been dropped.
KTB is a token issued by Shinhan Securities and Etherfuse, a real-world asset tokenization platform, backed by Korean government bonds with maturities of less than one year. When KTB was added, KRWQ described itself as the first won-denominated stablecoin to use tokenized Korean government bonds as a reserve asset.
Shinhan Securities had planned to build expertise and accumulate capabilities through its government bond tokenization experiment but recently reversed course. "After becoming aware that KTB was being used as a reserve asset, we determined it could become problematic and asked Etherfuse to remove it," a Shinhan official said. "We have no partnership with KRWQ." (See page 9 of the August 24 edition.)
