Korea Blockchain Week 2026 Returns to Seoul as Institutions Take Center Stage

Korea Blockchain Week is set to open in Seoul with a heavier institutional focus than in past editions, as banks, policymakers, Web3 tech executives, and market operators gather to discuss stablecoins, tokenization, real-world assets, custody, settlement, infrastructure, and the overlap between AI systems and on-chain finance.

The 2026 conference, organized by FACTBLOCK and presented in partnership with Upbit, will run from September 29 to October 1 at Walkerhill Hotels & Resorts. The first day is reserved for the invite-only Upbit Institutional Summit, and the public main conference will follow on September 30 and October 1. Side events, dinners, private meetings, and networking sessions are scheduled across the city for the duration of the conference.

Korea Blockchain Week’s Agenda: Six Core Themes

At KBW2026, the main program of keynote speeches and panel discussions has been organized around six themes: policy and market structure, the next market cycle, on-chain capital markets, 24/7 decentralized trading venues, settlement and payments, and the points where the AI and crypto spaces converge and interact.

Those tracks will pull in a mix of US policy officials, Korean and international market operators, top-ranking tech executives, and protocol founders. Patrick Witt, executive director of the White House President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, is listed among the speakers, as is Brian Quintenz, a former CFTC commissioner who later led policy at a16z crypto and now sits on boards at firms including Kalshi and Sui Group Holdings.

Caroline D. Pham, former acting chairman of the CFTC, is attending in her roles as chief legal officer and chief administrative officer of MoonPay, and as chief executive of MoonPay Institutional. Harry Jung, a former deputy executive director of the White House digital assets council and a former CFTC chief of staff, is also on the roster.

From the Korean side, Kyoungsuk Oh, chief executive of Upbit and its parent Dunamu, is scheduled to speak, including at the institutional summit on September 29. Sungguan Yun, director general of the Bank of Korea’s Office of Digital Currency, will bring the central bank’s payments and settlement policy work into the same room.

The Web3 space’s market-facing names will be familiar to both professional and everyday crypto users. Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom and co-founder of BitMEX, and Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies and co-founder of Fundstrat, are listed on the cycle and macro track. Jeff Yan, co-founder and chief executive of Hyperliquid Labs, will participate in the real-time markets discussion track.

Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and Consensys, is returning to Korea for the first time since 2019. Following Consensys Software’s planned split, announced earlier this month, he will serve as chairman and chief executive of MetaMask and as executive chairman of the new Consensys entity that will house protocol and institutional infrastructure work.

Other confirmed names include Bo Hines, chief executive of Tether USA and a former White House crypto council official; Yuval Rooz, co-founder and chief executive of Digital Asset and a co-founder of the Canton Network; author and entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan (former Coinbase CTO and General Partner at a16z, joining as a virtual speaker); Monica Long, president of Ripple; and Johann Kerbrat, who leads crypto at Robinhood.

Last year’s Korea Blockchain Week conference drew more than 14,000 attendees, over 340 speakers, 110-plus sponsors, and more than 400 side events, setting a promising baseline for 2026.

The commercial lineup supporting Korea Blockchain Week mirrors the event’s six core themes. Upbit is KBW’s presenting partner (represented on-stage by CEO Kyoungsuk Oh); 0G and BRV Capital Management are official conference partners; Stable, Tria, and GOAT Network are diamond sponsors; and BitGo is the official institutional sponsor.

Michael Heinrich, co-founder and chief executive of 0G Labs, is scheduled to discuss decentralized infrastructure for AI agents, including verifiable compute, AI-native chains, private inference, and decentralized storage. Brian Mehler, chief executive of Stable, will speak on blockchain rails for stablecoin transfers and payments. John Lilic, Tria’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, will take part in sessions on financial infrastructure that enables businesses and AI software agents to transact across multiple chains and assets.

GOAT Network, a Bitcoin-native Layer 2 network designed to expand Bitcoin’s liquidity and smart-contract functionality, is on the diamond tier alongside Stable and Tria. Mike Belshe, co-founder and chief executive of BitGo, is also speaking.

Korea Blockchain Week was initially conceived and launched by FACTBLOCK (a globally impactful Web3 ecosystem builder that actively supports Korean crypto and digital asset businesses) in 2018, and the event has since become one of the most popular and highly anticipated conferences on the industry’s global calendar. FACTBLOCK’s core activities include strategic advice and consultancy services, building bridges and connections between the Korean market and international companies, and reducing information asymmetry. It also operates a reward-based platform called FABLO, which enables Web3 users to easily discover and get involved with blockchain, crypto, and digital asset projects.

Korea’s Web3 Industry Is Moving From Trading to Infrastructure

South Korea has long been one of the world’s most active digital asset markets in terms of retail participation, with millions of people already trading cryptocurrencies, using DeFi services, and engaging with other popular Web3 verticals. That activity has motivated institutions and Web3 builders to work on a new set of projects, from banks developing stablecoins, digital asset custody solutions, tokenized real-world assets, tokenized deposits, and other new financial products to securities firms preparing for security token offerings (STOs) and regulators developing rules for longer-term institutional use.

Dedicated virtual-asset custody is becoming a more established part of South Korea’s regulated market. For example, BitGo Korea became a VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) in August, after its registration was accepted by the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit. The approval allows the firm to offer virtual asset custody and transfer services to institutional and enterprise clients in South Korea.

Major Korean banks have also been studying won-linked stablecoins, custody, and blockchain settlement, while the Bank of Korea has also advanced digital currency work through its Office of Digital Currency and Project Hangang, which tested tokenized deposits and tokenized central bank money with commercial banks.

KBW2026’s sessions will feature Korean banks and regulators alongside global exchanges, protocol teams, and policy officials, and cover core topics such as programmable money, on-chain assets, real-time settlement, licensing, liquidity, settlement rails, decentralized trading platforms, legal and regulatory compliance, new rules and frameworks, capital formation and market infrastructure, and more.

Korean AI and Crypto Strategies Come Into Focus at KBW

The AI track at Korea Blockchain Week is likely to be extremely popular this year, as South Korea is home to Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, two of the largest memory and semiconductor suppliers in the AI supply chain. After talks tied to the 2025 APEC meetings, the government and major Korean groups set out a plan to secure more than 260,000 of Nvidia’s latest GPUs across public and private-sector projects, including allocations for a national computing effort and corporate “AI factories” at Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, and Naver.

This means that Korea occupies an unusual, highly influential, and lucrative position where high-volume retail crypto activity, a banking system testing on-chain products, and a national push to add AI compute capacity are all converging. KBW’s conference track on AI and crypto will examine the ways in which AI models and systems can initiate transactions and payments and manage digital assets, rather than merely serving as tools for analysis and research. It will also consider the emergent risks around the points at which AI and crypto technologies interact, reflecting concerns that are becoming increasingly mainstream in 2026.

Korea Blockchain Week Begins Tuesday, September 29

The first day of KBW, the Upbit Institutional Summit, will open its doors tomorrow at Walkerhill Hotels & Resorts, with exclusive access for designated attendees and institutional investors by invitation only. The main KBW2026 conference will then take place on Wednesday and Thursday.

The public days are scheduled to include sessions across six tracks (market structure and policy, the next crypto market cycles, capital markets arriving on-chain, real-time exchanges that operate 24/7, infrastructure for settlement and payments, and AI-crypto convergences). In-depth discussions will also cover won-denominated stablecoins, tokenized deposits, digital asset custody, cross-border settlement and remittances, security token issuance, and the opportunities and risks that the overlap between AI systems and on-chain finance can introduce. Korean bank and central bank officials will feature across the program alongside a star cast of experts, policy staff, and executives representing global exchanges, protocol teams, and more.

FACTBLOCK has run Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul since its creation in 2018 – and with an extensive range of side events, private meetings, dinners, and other networking opportunities continuing across the city alongside the main conference program, KBW2026 could be the most significant edition yet.

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