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Highlights
- Upbit caters to 80% of the total crypto trading volumes in South Korea.
- South Korea's strict regulatory measures pose a challenge to Upbit's dominance.
- South Korea's mass appetite for crypto rises as investors choose high-risk, high-reward investments.
Asia cryptocurrency markets are seeing a strong revival once again as the South Korean crypto exchange Upbit now occupies a spot along the top five global exchanges. Recent market reports suggest that the Korean Won has displaced the USD as the most-used fiat currency for swapping in and out of BTC and other digital assets.
Upbit Popularity and Trading Skyrockets
Upbit provides a wide array of cryptocurrencies listed on the platform with easy access to users giving it a lion’s share in South Korea’s crypto landscape. Upbit alone caters to 80% of the total crypto trading volumes in South Korea indicating its massive dominance in the region. This puts Upbit in a neck-to-neck competition with global players like Coinbase. On the other hand, top market players like Binance seem to be losing market share in Asia.
Interestingly, this rise of Upbit comes despite growing regulator measures in South Korea. Last year, Upbit’s clientele comprised nearly a fifth of its primary banking partner’s overall deposits, drawing significant criticism from a South Korean legislator.
However, the introduction of new legislation aimed at safeguarding investors in the aftermath of the collapse of TerraUSD, founded by South Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon in 2022, poses the risk of inadvertently strengthening Upbit’s dominant position in the market.
The updated regulatory framework mandates crypto exchanges to bolster reserves, secure investor protection insurance, and intensify surveillance of suspicious transactions. As a result, last week itself, Upbit also decided to submit deposits and withdrawals exceeding $1 million.
Earlier this week on Tuesday, April 23, Singapore-based Crypto.com decided to postpone its plans to launch in South Korea stating that it would need more time in consulting with the regulators.
South Korea’s Mass Appeal for Crypto
Despite the $40 billion blow-up of the TerraUSD stablecoin, South Korean traders have continued to show very high participation in the crypto space showing their appetite for high-risk, high-rewards investments.
According to official data, over 6 million Koreans, constituting over 10% of the population, engaged in cryptocurrency trading on registered exchanges in the initial half of last year. The widespread interest in crypto has transformed into a political concern in Seoul, as competing candidates in the recent parliamentary elections pledged to postpone taxes on digital assets or ease constraints on investing in US Bitcoin ETFs.
Altcoins, smaller tokens beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, contribute to 80% of the trading volume on Korean exchanges, a stark contrast to the global platforms where they represent around 50%, as indicated by data from CryptoQuant. 35-year-old Ho Chan Chung, head of marketing at Korean analytics firm CryptoQuant said:
“I invested more in stocks before, but now I’m all in crypto. The Korean stock market has stagnated, and companies don’t operate for shareholders’ benefit.”
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