Crypto▲ Bullish
Upbit volumes drop 80% as crypto traders rotate into chip stocks
Upbit volumes crashed 80% as Korean retail rotated into Samsung and SK hynix. Bitcoin ETFs lost $2.7 billion in a single week. Liquidity is draining from the memecoin market.
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The degens are growing up. Well, sort of. Crypto-native retail traders, the cohort that turned dog coins into billion-dollar phenomena, are quietly rotating their capital out of memecoins and into semiconductor stocks.
South Korea offers the clearest window into this migration. Daily trading volumes on Upbit, the country's dominant exchange, fell roughly 80% year-over-year to about $1.8 billion by November 2025, exchange data show. Bithumb, the second-largest platform, lost about two-thirds of its trading activity over the same period.
Where did all that capital go? Across the aisle to equities. The KOSPI index climbed more than 70% year-to-date through late 2025, propelled by semiconductor heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Korean retail brokerage accounts swelled from 86.57 million to 95.33 million by the end of October 2025. Leveraged positions crept toward 30% of total holdings.
The pattern isn't limited to Korea. In the US, the SOX semiconductor index surged 170% over the prior year through mid-2026. During the same window, Bitcoin dropped roughly 40%.