• A Bank of Korea issue note ties direct Binance stablecoin-to-local-currency pairs to a 0.33-0.38 percentage point narrowing in the local stablecoin premium.
• Brazil's real depreciated 0.12% against the dollar as stablecoin demand converted into real dollar-buying pressure via market-maker hedging.
• The won has been insulated only structurally: Binance has no direct won-stablecoin pair, so Korean holders trade existing stablecoin balances rather than buying fresh with won.
• The study's author, Kim Ji-hyun, warns that broader corporate and foreign-investor access to dollar stablecoins would close that gap and could pressure the won lower.
• Bank of Korea's policy takeaway is to sequence any stablecoin liberalization with its separate won-internationalization and FX-market reform work, not treat them independently.

A dollar stablecoin doesn't move an exchange rate by existing — it moves one once an exchange lets holders buy it directly with a local currency instead of routing through dollars first. That's the mechanism a new Bank of Korea issue note isolates: once Binance opened direct pairs between stablecoins and currencies including the Brazilian real, the euro, and the Turkish lira, the local stablecoin premium collapsed and, in Brazil's case, the real itself weakened measurably against the dollar.

How the channel actually works

Binance letting users buy dollar-pegged stablecoins directly with a local currency, rather than through dollars first, closes the arbitrage gap between the local and global stablecoin price. The issue note, authored by Bank of Korea researcher Kim Ji-hyun and published September 3, 2026, measured that premium narrowing by 0.33 to 0.38 percentage points once a direct pair went live. The narrower gap traces to market makers who must buy or sell underlying dollars to keep their books balanced — and that hedging flow is what reaches the spot foreign-exchange market.

Brazil is the case study, not an outlier

Brazil is the clearest test because Binance already lists a direct real-to-stablecoin pair. The note found stablecoin demand there flowing through into actual dollar purchases, moving the real-dollar exchange rate 0.12% weaker — a depreciation the researchers attribute directly to the pairing, not a correlation inferred secondhand. The same pattern showed up wherever Binance opened a local pairing, which is what makes this a repeatable transmission channel rather than an anomaly specific to Brazil's market structure.

Why the won has been spared — so far

South Korea hasn't seen this pressure because Binance has no direct won-to-stablecoin pair: won holders can only trade stablecoins they already hold, not buy them fresh with won on the exchange. That structural gap, not any special resilience in the currency, is what the note credits for insulating Korea's exchange rate so far. Kim cautioned that if corporations and foreign investors gain broader access to dollar stablecoins, the domestic-overseas price gap would narrow the way it did in Brazil — and could pull the won's exchange rate down with it.

The policy trade-off Bank of Korea is flagging

The note's recommendation is that Seoul sequence any liberalization of won-linked stablecoin access together with its separate push on won internationalization and foreign-exchange market reform, rather than treat digital-asset rules as a standalone track. The same channel that would make a won stablecoin more useful for cross-border settlement — deeper, more direct convertibility against dollar stablecoins — is the channel the study shows can weaken the won. For a currency that isn't fully internationalized, that's a trade-off to price in before market access widens, not after.