Recently, with the surge in the value of “antique coins” such as XRP, the news of “South Korean aunts rushing into the crypto market” has spread in the community again. At the same time, the trading volume of XRP, APT and other related tokens on South Korean trading platforms such as Upbit and Bithumb even exceeded that of Binance. In other words, the trading volume of these tokens in the South Korean market alone is enough to match the total trading volume in the rest of the world.
For a long time, the crypto community has regarded listing on Upbit as a great boon for projects. After a token is listed on these Korean exchanges, the price can often soar rapidly in a short period of time. This strong purchasing power has made the world curious about the "Kimchi Premium". How does the Korean cryptocurrency market work? What is the hype logic of investors here?
Rhythm interviewed Andy, a member of Frax Finance who has been engaged in crypto construction and education in South Korea for many years, and discussed in depth the investment logic and real situation of the Korean crypto market.
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BlockBeats: You have a very strong presence in the Korean market, with a lot of buy-ins, etc. How do people get into the cryptocurrency market and how do they choose their coins?
Andy: Frankly, it’s still a puzzle that everyone is trying to solve. One thing I know for sure is that DeFi is pretty weak here because the exchanges are so easy to deposit and withdraw. I’m a Canadian citizen who has lived in Korea for 10 years. In the early days, I was able to trade on Upbit and Bithumb. I remember that it took me only five minutes to open a bank account and connect to Upbit or Bithumb to complete all the operations and easily trade and withdraw in Korean won.
So in Korea, it is very easy to enter the crypto market and invest, it is not difficult, although you have to open an account in a specific bank. Secondly, I think the act of trading cryptocurrencies has a bit of a "ray of hope" flavor among Korean investors, especially the young group between 20 and 30 years old.
And the Korean media are discussing this topic, and you can see that people from their 20s to 60s and even 70s are participating in the crypto market. I don’t know if you have heard that the Bithumb office building was once crowded with people aged 50 to 70 trying to open accounts, especially at the beginning of a new bull market.
BlockBeats: Did this happen in the last bull market or in this one?
Andy: It's this bull market, just in the last week or two, it's been reported in the news.
Retired people aged 50 to 70 are queuing up to open accounts, and the queue has even reached more than 3,000. It's really crazy. Mainstream media and social networks are also talking about the secondary market of cryptocurrencies. Although mainstream media tends to portray it as dangerous, as Bitcoin hits a record high, more and more people are starting to pay attention.
According to media reports, a nearly 60-year-old housewife said while queuing to open an account: "It feels like a waste to keep my retirement money in a bank account, so I tried to invest in Bitcoin and Dogecoin." The picture comes from the Internet
Back to the young people, I think a lot of people in their early 20s see this as an opportunity similar to buying a lottery ticket. I don't want to say gambling, but they do see crypto as a way to make money quickly because the media reports they are exposed to are more about some people making a lot of money through crypto, which is more attractive than those news about losses. Many people in their 30s will be a little more strategic and try to understand what the project behind the token is, but even so, many of my friends will still buy the token first and then go to the community to ask what the project is, so most people don't actually understand the real situation of the project.
This mentality may be due to strong FOMO, which is also common in Korean culture, where the culture of following trends is very extreme. Whether it is entertainment or investment, many people feel that if they don’t participate, they will fall behind the trend, or even feel out of touch with the entire culture. So if you don’t know what you are investing in, it may be because you are afraid of missing out, or your friends suggest you get involved.
I used to live in Canada, where everything was relatively more relaxed, and I never felt the pressure to chase. But after coming to Korea, I felt the fast-paced life in society, such as you have to graduate at a certain age, serve in the military, get married, find a job, and invest. So when everyone around you is trading cryptocurrencies on Upbit or Bithumb, you feel that you can't fall behind. I think many people are driven by FOMO, afraid that they will fall behind others in investment, especially when they see their friends start to make money, this feeling will be even stronger.
BlockBeats: Has the DYOR culture (Do Your Own Research) developed in the Korean crypto market over the past few years?
Andy: I have been working in the crypto space for seven years and have been living in Korea. I have indeed seen more and more education and research platforms emerge, and many offline events and Web2 projects have also participated, which really started to help people understand and learn about cryptocurrencies. More and more investors are indeed doing their own research before buying tokens. Many KOLs are also discussing different areas of cryptocurrencies, including NFTs and other projects, and teaching people how to transfer funds from centralized trading platforms for airdrops or staking.
However, the reason why the huge trading volume of Korean exchanges is often comparable to Binance is that most of the funds remain on the exchange. For example, when I tell people that there is a pool with an annualized return of 100%, just transfer the tokens from the platform to a wallet such as MetaMask, and then cross to another public chain for staking, many people will give up because the process is very complicated. I think this is where our education field needs to improve greatly. Compared with the United States and other places, South Korea is far from enough in the use of DeFi and wallets.
Here, most traders only trade on the platform, and the funds do not leave the centralized exchange platform and enter personal wallets. Of course, younger groups, such as young people in their 20s and 30s, do do some research on their own and are willing to try these projects, but compared with the number of overall market participants, this group is still relatively small.
BlockBeats: So in Korea, can we consider the crypto market to be as big as the stock market, or at least comparable?
Andy: I think the comparison is fair, and I think cryptocurrencies do get a lot of attention, at least in terms of media attention. People talk about cryptocurrencies about as often as the stock market. But the difference is that cryptocurrencies are not seen as the best option, and they don't have as good an image as the stock market.
If the stock market falls, the media coverage may be "poor government policies" or "the financial and economic situation in South Korea is not good." But if Bitcoin suddenly falls 40%, the media will usually say "Look, this happened again, this is why cryptocurrency is so dangerous, it ruined many people's lives", so the atmosphere of public opinion is different.
But in reality we know that cryptocurrencies are relatively safe as long as you do enough research. Although it is more volatile than the stock market, it is not as dangerous as you think if you know what you are doing. If I know nothing about a token and just follow the trend and buy a meme coin, and then it suddenly drops 80%, then obviously I will think it is a scam. But if I know what I am investing in advance and don’t do enough homework, then the loss is also expected. This is the difference.
BlockBeats: In your opinion, how much impact does negative media coverage have on Korean crypto investors?
Andy: This is a very interesting thing. Many media have been promoting the dangers of cryptocurrency and advising people not to participate, but in fact, this may have attracted more people to try it. Because many people just follow the trend, not because they really understand cryptocurrency.
Korea is a country that is very trend-conscious, whether it is music, fashion or other fields, people always chase the latest trends, and the same is true for cryptocurrencies, "Everyone is investing in cryptocurrency trading, so I have to participate", "Everyone is talking about Bitcoin, so I have to join in." When I get in a taxi and the driver starts asking, "Have you heard of Bitcoin?", it is usually a signal for me to sell some tokens.
But during the bear market, the general public stopped talking about Bitcoin, but the market was still trading heavily. If you look at the people who really focus on the crypto market and do their own research, they are actually very smart and follow the market trends, and sometimes their information is faster than me, especially about some new projects. In South Korea, there are some "crypto fanatics" who are very smart and know all the latest developments in the crypto market.
The logic behind cryptocurrency speculation among Korean retail investors: Why are APT and XRP the most popular?
BlockBeats: Is meme coin a hot track in the Korean market?
Andy: From my personal experience, they don’t trade meme coins very often. This is understandable, as these coins are not listed on centralized exchanges, and people usually trade existing tokens on the platform with Korean won. Moodeng was recently listed on Bithumb, and I think this may bring some changes.
Dogecoin is still quite popular in South Korea, but I bet many people may not know that Dogecoin actually has no supply cap. Recently, people just think that Dogecoin is equal to Musk, and Musk and Trump are now on good terms, and the latter is about to become president, so they are very bullish on Dogecoin.
But in general, once the price of a token starts to surge in South Korea, it leads to a huge influx of money, pushing the price up even more, as people sell other assets and move into Dogecoin or other things that are going strong. of tokens. This is another manifestation of the FOMO effect. I even think that many people trade Solana in South Korea, but they do not use SOL to buy meme coins in the on-chain ecosystem.
BlockBeats: If you are not interested in participating in the ecosystem, why do you want to buy Solana? What other popular targets are there in Korea?
Andy: I think this is mainly because Solana is a popular token globally, and you will see a lot of globally popular tokens like Solana, which Koreans like to buy. But you will also see that some tokens that are not very popular or not heard of in other regions still have a large trading volume in Korea, such as Aptos, whose token APT has the highest trading volume in Korea.
In the Korean crypto market, there are some special phenomena, such as many people buying tokens such as SEI and SUI simply because they sound like girls’ names, and there is a meme that “buying SEI and SUI will help you find a beautiful girlfriend.” A similar situation is APT, which means “apartment,” so people say “buy APT and you can buy an apartment, buy ONDO and you can buy an apartment-style house.” Such memes actually have a great impact on the market, so we can see some tokens that are not well-known outside of Korea have huge trading volumes here, just because many people don’t know much about them but still buy them, which is actually crazy.
BlockBeats: Is Roise’s recent hit song (APT) also one of the influencing factors?
Andy: Aptos was already popular before this. In fact, this is a case study I did to see what the Aptos team did right, how projects like IQ or Frax can enter the Korean market and successfully occupy a place like Ondo or Aptos. I think this is also why the founder of Aptos often comes to Korea. I see him so often that it’s not surprising anymore, so the way the Korean market works is indeed a bit strange.
But it is certain that, first, a lot of trading happens on centralized exchanges, and second, people haven’t done a lot of in-depth research. I think it can be summarized like this: meme coin traders in other parts of the world trade meme coins, but in Korea, people don’t trade meme coins, but they trade other cryptocurrencies in the same way they trade meme coins.
BlockBeats: The price of XRP skyrocketed some time ago, and its trading volume on Upbit even exceeded that of Binance. Why is XRP so popular in South Korea?
Andy: XRP has actually been popular in Korea for five, six, or seven years. I remember that the first cryptocurrency I bought was XRP. At that time, I had no idea what I was buying. I hadn’t entered the industry yet. I was just a college student. At that time, my relative said to me, “Buy this coin called XRP, it will go up to $10,” so I bought some. Then the SEC lawsuit happened, but even so, its popularity in Korea did not diminish.
This is a bit like EOS, which may not be talked about much now, but there is still an active EOS community in South Korea, and occasionally the price can rise sharply due to South Korea's promotion. As for why EOS is so popular, I can't say.
I think the reason why Ripple is popular is that people believe it is the "next big thing", especially when it fights the government and wins, this narrative becomes particularly strong, especially in the United States. I don't have a definite answer, but I am sure that Ripple is indeed very hot in South Korea. Especially after the news that they defeated the SEC, its popularity has returned.
So I think that if a token wants to be popular in Korea, it must first gain some recognition globally before entering the Korean market. But this is not the case for every token, like Aptos seems to have risen in Korea first.
But I also know that most traders, including myself, are not deeply involved in the XRP ecosystem. I don't know much about their technology and specific progress. And many people know that they are going to launch their own stablecoin, which I think is also a factor that may drive the market. In South Korea, due to the Terra/Luna incident, the image of stablecoins is not particularly good.
BlockBeats: The Luna incident had a big impact on South Korea, right? Many institutions invested a lot of money.
Andy: Yes, it was very bad. I remember there were a lot of news reports saying that some people committed suicide because of this, it was really tragic. I also know that some large Korean venture capital firms invested a lot of money in it, and suffered huge losses. Many institutions were hit hard. So, except for stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, the narrative of stablecoins is still not very good in Korea.
BlockBeats: Another interesting phenomenon is the high premium of Korean trading platforms. Are Korean investors aware of this? What is their attitude towards this?
Andy: Yes, they definitely know about the "Kimchi Premium". In the early days, people would buy it on one platform with a credit card and then sell it on another platform, making an easy 10% profit. Now this system has been disabled, but they definitely know about this phenomenon.
For example, when martial law was declared a while ago, Bitcoin plummeted 40% in 10 minutes on Upbit and Bithumb. I'm sure many people tried to buy low and sell on Binance or wait for it to go back up, but from what I've talked to some people, this arbitrage strategy was very difficult to operate at the time because Upbit and Bitdump were both frozen and deposits and withdrawals were not possible.
I even heard that due to the current unstable situation of the Korean government, some people will place orders in advance so that once the market experiences an extreme drop again, they will be automatically executed and receive ultra-low-price chips.
On December 3, due to the martial law, BTC once had a serious negative premium of 40% on Korean trading platforms such as Upbit and Bithumb; Source: Internet
BlockBeats: South Korea’s cryptocurrency taxation policy seems to have been delayed. Does anyone care about this?
Andy: They are very concerned about it, and every time it comes to a critical moment, politicians running for election will make delaying taxes or studying related policies as part of their campaign platform. South Korea has experienced three tax delays here, each time for two years, and now it is two years again. But as far as I know, the new president is not so optimistic about cryptocurrencies after taking office, which makes some people worried. But in any case, the issue of cryptocurrency taxation is a very concerned issue, and everyone is very concerned about it.
