South Korea Expands Its Digital-Currency Pilot to 500,000 Users and Real Government Money

The Bank of Korea is scaling Phase 2 of Project Hangang, a unified-ledger pilot combining a wholesale CBDC layer with bank-issued deposit tokens. Decrypt reports capacity for 500,000 users after Phase 1 opened roughly 81,000 wallets, with about 42% of wallet holders using them. Official Korean sources confirm expanded participation across nine banks, broader merchant coverage, person-to-person transfers, higher wallet limits and real government-subsidy use cases.