South Korea’s Jeonbuk Bank Offers Bitcoin-Backed Corporate Loans

The notable part is not the loan product but the custody arrangement: a regulated bank is treating Bitcoin as pledgeable collateral while outsourcing safekeeping to a third party, which keeps the bank at arm's length from holding the asset itself. That structure is what makes the product legible to Korean regulators and could become a template for other lenders weighing crypto exposure on corporate balance sheets. The open question is whether collateral eligibility remains confined to Bitcoin or broadens, and how custodian and liquidation arrangements are handled if volatility spikes.