Mirae Asset Tokenizes the Power Grid to Chase a $109B On-Chain Empire
Chairman Park Hyeon-joo plans to migrate 10% of his firm's $1.1 trillion traditional balance sheet into crypto to steal market share from native giants.
South Korean financial giant Mirae Asset is planning to tokenize physical electricity to turn a struggling crypto exchange into a $109 billion digital finance empire. To claw back relevance for Digital X, a rebranded platform that held just 0.5% of the domestic market last year, the conglomerate has initiated a scorched-earth tactic. They are completely eliminating all trading fees on won-denominated assets until August 2027. It marks the first time a traditional Korean conglomerate has taken direct control of a domestic crypto exchange, signaling a brutal turf war ahead.
The Ten Percent Bet
Chairman and founder Park Hyeon-joo views this move as his legacy pivot. In July, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission officially approved Mirae Asset’s outright acquisition of Korbit for $102 million. Korbit was founded in 2013 as the country's very first cryptocurrency exchange, but despite its first-mover status, it had dwindled to near irrelevance in the shadow of crypto-native giants Upbit and Bithumb. Park immediately rebranded the acquisition to Digital X and imposed traditional banking-grade internal controls on his new subsidiary.
The sheer scale of Park's ambition requires a massive reallocation of capital. Mirae plans to systematically convert exactly 10% of its legacy $1.1 trillion traditional client asset base into on-chain products. It is the equivalent of a Wall Street titan deciding to migrate a tenth of its entire multi-generational balance sheet into crypto, stablecoins, and Real World Assets overnight.
To achieve this, the company plans to raise up to $218 million in third-party capital by the first quarter of 2027. They want outright division profitability by next year. But buying a failing exchange and flooding it with cash is the easy part.
Tokenizing the Power Grid
Digital X will focus on four specific pillars to reach its massive target. Cryptocurrency trading and proprietary stablecoins form the core foundation of the platform. The real growth engine, however, relies on Security Token Offerings and the tokenization of physical commodities. Mirae intends to move gold, silver, and actual electrical power on-chain.
“When Bitcoin first emerged, few believed in its potential. However, those seemingly reckless beliefs came together to create today's monumental market miracle.”— Park Hyeon-joo
This strategy requires fundamentally altering how traditional retail investors view digital assets. Park is forcing a culture clash between legacy compliance officers and crypto maximalists, warning employees that strict regulatory compliance cannot be compromised. He is betting that a modern institutional sheen will convince conservative, traditional-finance boomers to migrate their life savings into complex stablecoins and tokenized energy.
The engineering required to tokenize physical electricity is highly complex. Yet those technical hurdles pale in comparison to the regulatory reality awaiting the firm.
What people are saying
“Institutional lending is coming natively to the XRP Ledger. No smart contracts needed. @Ripple, @CicadaCredit, and @ClearpoolFin stand ready to deploy real-world, $RLUSD-powered credit directly on-chain as soon as the Lending Protocol (XLS-66) and Single Asset Vault (XLS-65)”
“Assets added to the roadmap today: Basecat (BASECAT), DebtReliefBot (DRB), Dolphin (POD), and Grass (GRASS)”
Mirae's $109B Crypto Master Plan
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