Jeonbuk Bank Launches South Korea's First Bitcoin-Collateralized Loan

Jeonbuk Bank has launched South Korea's first Bitcoin-collateralized loan, initially open only to corporate borrowers, with Bitcoin as the sole accepted collateral and proceeds restricted to business operations. The bank does not hold the cryptocurrency itself; custody sits with a compliant institution that has reported to the financial intelligence unit. Collateral is valued using a weighted average index across global exchanges rather than a single platform's price, and defaults are recovered through a court auction under the revised Civil Execution Rules effective Oct. 1. Loan limits, interest rates and collateral ratios have not been announced, and an Ethereum-collateralized product is expected to follow.