PANews December 28 news, according to Wall Street Insight reports, Asian stock markets have shown mixed performance this year against the backdrop of a strong dollar. Some achieved a stock market bull run in local currency at the cost of currency depreciation, while others sacrificed part of their stock market gains for relatively stable exchange rates, with only South Korea being an exception. In terms of the Korean won, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) has fallen by 10.0% this year, and considering the depreciation of the won, the KOSPI in US dollars has decreased by 18.9%, making it the weakest in Asia. From the perspective of capital flow, since the second half of this year, only institutions in South Korea have maintained net buying in the stock market, while the resident sector has been continuously reducing purchases.
Analysis suggests that a significant portion of the money that South Korean residents have taken out of the stock market has gone into 'crypto trading'. Data from the Bank of Korea (BOK) shows that as of November, the number of domestic cryptocurrency investors in South Korea has reached 15.59 million, an increase of 610,000 from the previous month. Currently, among the 51 million South Koreans, 30% are involved in crypto trading. The daily trading volume of South Korea's top five cryptocurrency exchanges—UPbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX—has surged from 3.4 trillion won in October to 14.9 trillion won in November, an increase of more than four times. South Koreans have always been keen on investing in cryptocurrencies. During the first wave of the cryptocurrency bull market in 2017, about 5% of the population participated; in the second round of the bull market in 2021, 10% participated; and now this proportion has expanded to 30%. Historically, the South Korean stock index has shown a positive correlation with Bitcoin prices until October of this year, when this positive correlation was completely broken.
