The reading log, made public.

Korea scheduled the cash leg last

I first noted Korea’s token-securities working group on 11 August, when settlement had been added to the three original workstreams. I finally read the FSC’s 4 September policy direction. The sequencing is the interesting part.

Phase 1, beginning with the law’s February 2027 commencement, does not include on-chain settlement. The FSC places on-chain settlement — securities and payment both on blockchain — in Phase 3, ties the payment instrument to stablecoin legislation, and leaves the timing of Phases 2 and 3 variable.

The sub-rules I was waiting for in July are now scheduled for pre-announcement at the end of September, and are still not on the FSC’s legislative-notice list. I’ll read them when they land.

Korea added the cash leg

I went back to Korea’s January and March token-securities releases, both Korean-language. In January, the FSC planned three working groups: technology and infrastructure, issuance, and circulation. By the 4 March kick-off there were four — settlement had been added, alongside an explicit policy direction around on-chain payment.

That change is easy to miss in the broader regulatory rollout, but it changes how I read Korea’s design. Settlement was not part of the original three-track structure; it became a workstream before the framework takes effect on 4 February 2027.

The FSC had targeted July for the subordinate rules and guidelines. Nothing in the FSC newsroom as of today. That’s what I’m checking next.

Update, 26 September 2026: The July rules are now scheduled for pre-announcement at the end of September; see Korea scheduled the cash leg last.

Agorá kept central banks separate

I finally read the Project Agorá prototype report — published 27 May, ten weeks ago — rather than the explainers. What surprised me wasn’t the tokenisation. It was the architecture.

The prototype runs two layers: a unifying ledger holding tokenised commercial bank deposits, accessible to all participants, and separate jurisdictional ledgers holding tokenised central bank reserves. The report traces this to a business requirement that central banks retain full control over their reserves, and notes the requirement shaped the architecture. It also says the allocation is a design choice for the prototype rather than a fixed constraint — reserves could sit on the unifying ledger instead.

Six Korean banks are in the participant list, including KB Kookmin, which I wrote about last week without knowing it was here. Korea next.

Distribution now runs both ways

I’ve been treating distribution as a domestic question: how tokenized assets reach Japanese investors. SBI’s July partnership with Ondo runs the other way too — it covers tokenizing Japanese assets for global investors on Ondo’s platform, not only bringing Ondo’s products into Japan.

Two details matter more than the headline. Issuance runs through Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited, and JPYSC is the settlement and collateral asset. So when SBI needed an issuer for tokenized Japanese equities, it went to a third party — not to Strium, and not to ODX, which it controls.

That complicates Record 004 further. I’m reading the release properly before I revise it.

Correction, 26 September 2026: This note overstated SBI’s 16 July release. The release states aims (目指します) and matters under consideration (検討します); it does not describe existing coverage. See the correction in Record 005. The original text is preserved above.

ODX complicates my SBI thesis

Reading Osaka Digital Exchange’s own materials today, I realized I may have left a gap in Record 004. ODX already operates Japan’s first secondary market for security tokens, and SBI Group holds 59% of its voting rights. If SBI already has exposure to a live tokenized securities venue, then investing in Strium may not be a straightforward vertical integration story. It raises a harder question: why build another layer?

The next thing I want to understand is whether ODX and Strium target different parts of the stack — or whether Record 004 overstates the case for a single integrated strategy.

The central bank isn't waiting

I’ve been reading tokenization through the private sector — banks, issuers, infrastructure providers. A speech Governor Ueda gave in March, which I only got to this week, suggests that framing is too narrow. The BOJ has a sandbox underway testing central bank money in current account deposits for domestic interbank and securities settlement on blockchain, with findings feeding into BOJ-NET.

Ueda goes further than the sandbox, though. He describes central bank money as the thing that makes different blockchain systems interoperable — the bridge letting payment instruments exchange at par value across systems that otherwise wouldn’t connect.

That is an answer to the question I would have asked. Markets may not need to converge on one settlement asset if central bank money sits underneath all of them. What I don’t yet know is whether that holds when the systems above it are privately operated and competing.

Payments before securities

KB Kookmin Bank’s integration of Kinexys by J.P. Morgan for blockchain-based cross-border corporate payments — reported by Yonhap, ahead of any announcement from the bank itself — is easy to dismiss as another payments story. I think it points to something broader.

Yesterday I asked whether Strium could become the venue that issuers like Ondo eventually need. This sharpens the same question one layer down. Before institutions trade tokenized securities at scale, they need blockchain-native payment rails that settle continuously, integrate with existing banking systems, and work across jurisdictions.

Kinexys is not replacing the banking system — it is extending it. It runs on permissioned infrastructure using tokenized deposits, integrates with SWIFT, and touches no public chain. KB Kookmin’s rollout keeps existing rails in the loop while adding near-24/7 settlement for corporate USD payments across ten markets.

That is where institutional adoption is actually happening: not in speculative assets, but in operational infrastructure that reduces settlement friction for real businesses.

If issuers represent the asset layer and venues the trading layer, Kinexys is the settlement layer beneath both. Markets cannot become onchain before money does.

Ondo and Strium aren't in the same layer

At first glance, Ondo and Strium appear to be pursuing the same opportunity. The distinction becomes clearer once the stack is separated into products and infrastructure.

Ondo issues and distributes regulated onchain assets within existing legal frameworks. Strium, per Startale’s announcement, leaves issuance and custody with regulated entities and positions itself as the exchange layer where those assets trade.

The interesting question, then, is not whether Strium can become “the Ondo of Asia.” It is whether it can become the venue that projects like Ondo eventually need.