South Korea has witnessed significant growth in cryptocurrency retail trading, reaching $18 billion on December 2, which is $4 billion more than the country's stock market volume. Major contributions came from altcoins such as Ripple's XRP, Dogecoin (DOGE), Stellar (XLM), Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and Hedera (HBAR). XRP showed the highest trading volume at $6.3 billion. Experts note the beginning of the altcoin season.