The battle for stablecoins in Taiwan heats up! Rumors suggest that "6 banks" may be the first to issue them.

Author: Ariel, Crypto City

Six Taiwanese banks are potential issuers of stablecoins
Taiwan’s Draft Virtual Asset Service Act has been approved by the Executive Yuan, although it has not yet passed the third reading in the Legislative Yuan, the Financial Supervisory Commission is actively drafting subsidiary regulations, initially planning to only allow domestic financial institutions to issue stablecoins, encouraging many industry players to try.

According to the “Economic Daily News,” six banks are rumored to be the first to issue stablecoins: CTBC Bank, Cathay United Bank, Taishin Bank, KGI Bank, Union Bank, and Taipei Fubon Bank.
These six banks’ strategies related to blockchain and virtual assets are summarized as follows:

• CTBC Bank: Approved by the FSC to pilot virtual asset custody services, initially focusing on Bitcoin and Ethereum, managed through cold wallets and private key sharding technology, and publicly recruited blockchain engineers in 2025.
• Cathay United Bank: Permitted to pilot virtual asset custody, targeting high-net-worth individual clients, and participating in the FSC’s RWA tokenization group, planning to trial on-chain bond issuance.
• Taishin Bank: Currently undergoing custody service guidance, recently collaborating with Taiwan Exchange Hoya Bit to offer New Taiwan Dollar trust services, providing 24/7 deposit and withdrawal services.
• KGI Bank: After obtaining pilot qualification, partnered with MaiCoin, BitoPro, and other legitimate Taiwanese trading platforms, transferring some assets into bank cold wallets for safekeeping, and previously launched the “KGI Coin Enjoy Card” for card rewards exchanged for cryptocurrencies.
• Union Bank: Besides being approved for custody services, it also acquired about 9.67% equity in MaiCoin through investment, strengthening its participation in Taiwan’s crypto market.
• Fubon Bank: Established “TWEX Taiwan Big Virtual Asset Exchange” through Taiwan Mobile, with Fubon providing trust custody and cold wallet technology mechanisms.

In addition to the above banks, Taiwan state-owned banks “First Commercial Bank” and “Hua Nan Bank” also expressed strong interest in stablecoins to the “Commercial Times”; E.SUN Financial Holding Chairman has also stated that the institution will not miss out on the stablecoin and tokenization markets.
Furthermore, the strategic distribution partnership between blockchain enterprise settlement infrastructure provider Capital Layer and Taiwan’s largest system integrator, DunYang Technology, is seen as part of their stablecoin deployment plans.

In 2018, Taiwan’s first “Taiwan Dollar Stablecoin” quietly exited the market
On the other hand, several years ago, Taiwan’s third-party payment provider Green World Fintech Service launched CryptoDT blockchain financial services and issued Taiwan Stablecoin (TWDT-ETH), based on Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard, each pegged 1:1 to the New Taiwan Dollar, with circulating Taiwan Stablecoins representing trust account holdings of NT$1, and the total tokens equal to the trust balance, with regular balance disclosures and accountant certification.
Recently, the YouTuber Tech Classroom, known for criticizing stablecoins as “storage cards,” once openly called stablecoins a “tech hype” and criticized them as speculative. Back then, they actually praised Taiwan Stablecoin as “Taiwan’s first stablecoin,” and expressed great anticipation for blockchain development in Taiwan.

Image source: Tech Classroom Facebook page | Taiwan Stablecoin launched by Green World Fintech Service, regarded as Taiwan’s first “NTD stablecoin” at the time.

However, Taiwan Stablecoin lacked market demand and practical use cases, quickly delisted from partner exchanges and faded away. As Taiwan’s legal framework becomes clearer and international attention on stablecoins increases, whether Green World will restart or attract other payment providers to jump into this market remains to be seen.

Will Taiwan’s stablecoin be ready by 2026?
According to current draft regulations, stablecoin issuers must maintain reserves of the fiat currency received and are not allowed to pay interest or rewards, raising questions about future profit models for issuers.
Insiders told the “Economic Daily News” that the purpose of banks issuing stablecoins is to further explore business opportunities in blockchain finance and real-world asset tokenization (RWA).
Deputy Chairperson of the FSC, Zhuang Xiuyuan, previously revealed that some Taiwanese import-export traders have already begun actual transactions using stablecoins. As the amount of stablecoins held by traders gradually increases, they will inevitably seek to connect with traditional financial institutions.
After years of failure for Taiwan Stablecoin, is the market truly ready for Taiwan’s stablecoin? Zhuang Xiuyuan expressed optimism, stating that she believes that driven by supply chain payment demands, there will be new demand for Taiwan dollar stablecoins domestically, and the role of financial institutions at this point is to provide seamless integration between fiat currency and stablecoins.