Crypto▼ Bearish
South Korea crypto exchanges chase finance deals as volume halves
Combined turnover at South Korea's five won-based crypto exchanges fell 54.6% year over year, pushing Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax into bank and brokerage partnerships.
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Combined turnover at South Korea's five won-based crypto exchanges tumbled 54.6% year over year in the first half, pushing Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax into a scramble for bank and brokerage partnerships.
The five exchanges posted $366.58 billion in turnover from January to June, a 54.6% drop from the same period in 2024. From July 1 to 27, cumulative volume reached roughly 17.3 trillion won ($12.5 billion), down 16.9% from the comparable stretch a month earlier. Local stocks have been sucking liquidity away from crypto for months.
In July, the five exchanges averaged 597.8 billion won ($406.5 million) in daily turnover, equal to just 1.59% of the KOSPI stock market's daily average. That ratio stood above 11% in January before sliding to around 6% in March and April and roughly 2% in May. For context, domestic crypto volume hit as high as 21 trillion won in a single day in November 2024, when traders bet on a crypto-friendly policy from a second Trump administration.
Bitcoin's average daily move ran 1.25% in the first half and altcoins 1.79%, both below the KOSPI's 4.67%. Bitcoin traded between $60,000 and $63,000. Some retail investors shifted funds to the stock market to chase the rising KOSPI index, the article said. Korbit sold 15 BTC and 60 ETH over ten days to raise roughly $11.6 million (1.6 billion KRW) in cash. Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, saw its first-quarter revenue and operating profit decline by 55% and 78% year over year, respectively.
A director at Tiger Research described the current situation as a "second crypto winter," citing the sharp contraction in total crypto market cap and the fact that no new projects are emerging.
The winter lifted for 48 hours when the KOSPI shed as much as 864 trillion won in market value on July 28 and 29. The five exchanges traded $964.11 million on July 28, up 82.5% from the prior month's daily average, as a circuit breaker halted a stock drop of more than 10%. Upbit's USDT turnover hit 200.045 billion won on July 29, roughly double its Bitcoin volume.
Thinner volume pushed liquidity toward the largest exchanges. Upbit's July turnover fell 10% to about 11.7 trillion won, yet its market share climbed from 62.3% to 67.4%. Bithumb's July turnover dropped 26.6% to 4.7 trillion won, and its share slipped to 27.1%, leaving a 40.3-percentage-point gap between the two. Upbit and Bithumb's combined share was above 90% in early July, according to a Kaiko report on the Korean market written by Presto Labs. The report found the top two handling nearly 96% of domestic volume historically. Upbit capitalized on its advantage by waiving fees on six stablecoins from July 26, lifting its USDT turnover to nearly 160 billion won, roughly four times Bithumb's.