There has been a significant upswing in the crypto trading activity recorded in South Korea in the last 100 days.
The leading crypto exchanges in the country, Bithumb and Upbit, saw their highest trading volumes in the first week of January 2024.
Even though crypto assets in South Korea have a noticeable premium, the most widely traded tokens in the region are different from leading pairs on global platforms like Coinbase and Binance.
Binance and Coinbase
BTC, ETH, SOL, XAI, and TIA are the leading five crypto on Binance in terms of trading volume as of January 15th, 2024.
The top five tokens in terms of trading volume on Coinbase are BTC, ETH, SOL, OP, and TIA. The two crypto exchanges are the world’s largest in terms of 24-hour trading volumes.
However, the crypto exchanges that dominate the South Korean market are Bithumb and Upbit, with the latter holding a major share of the aggregate crypto volume in the country.
Even though there is considerable similarity among the top five crypto tokens traded on Coinbase and Binance, the top coin traded on Upbit is Ethereum Classic (ETC).
The token enjoys considerable popularity in South Korea, with data showing that 68.96% of the ETC trades are actually carried out in the Korean won.
Upbit and Bithumb
As for Bithumb, the Ethereum fork emerges as the fifth most traded token in terms of trading volume and is the sixth most traded on Coinone.
In addition, the token is currently trading on Upbit at a premium of 4.65%, while the premium for BTC is around 4.40% on the same exchange, relative to weighted and average global exchange rates.
The top five cryptocurrencies traded on Upbit in terms of trading volume are ETC, BTC, T, SUI, and SOL, while the ones on Bithumb are BTC, SOL, ETH, XRP and ETC.
The leading five tokens traded on Coinone are BTC, XRP, WEMIX, ETH and SOL. It should be noted that the Korean won is used for 80% of the threshold network token (T) transactions.
Won settlements for SUI trades and XRP swaps are 23.85% and 29.40%, respectively. The won is also used for settling about 80.18% of the market trades of WEMIX.
More details
These crypto exchanges, as well as Korbit, contributed to 6.93% and 2.8% of all global BTC and ETH swaps over the last day.
According to the data, the trading volumes on Bithumb and Upbit had started to rise close to the end of September 2023. This saw them reach their peak in the initial week of January 2024.
The daily trading volumes recorded on both crypto exchanges in January have surpassed any records that were established in 2023.
In the last six months, the digital currency trading market in South Korea recorded substantial growth, with its regional exchanges seeing record-breaking trading volumes.
This trend is regarded as a positive sign in terms of crypto adoption in the country, as traders have started to diversify their portfolios beyond the leading pairs that are commonly seen on international platforms.