Article reposted from: BitPush
Political black swans appear out of nowhere.
Affected by the emergency decree in South Korea, the Korean won and Korean stocks plummeted, with the price of BTC on South Korea's largest crypto exchange Upbit briefly spiking to $61,600. Upbit data shows that as soon as the emergency decree news broke, the exchange rate of Bitcoin against the Korean won (KRW) crashed from 130 million KRW to 93.6 million KRW, a drop of nearly 33%. Major altcoins also saw double-digit declines on the platform, including the recently surging XRP, as well as tokens like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.
The giant whale takes advantage of the chaos to pick up chips
This event created arbitrage opportunities for savvy traders.
Unlike in the past few years when smart money could buy Bitcoin at lower prices on exchanges in Hong Kong and North America and then sell it in Korea at a 'kimchi premium', the situation this time can be reversed.
According to Lookonchain, as the Korean market fell, many whales transferred large amounts of USDT to the Upbit exchange to buy tokens at discounted prices.
Data shows that within an hour of the South Korean president announcing the emergency decree, large traders transferred over $163 million in USDT to Upbit. Lookonchain stated on X: 'Many whales transferred a large amount of USDT to Upbit, possibly seeking bottom-fishing opportunities.' Due to the influx of panic sellers and bottom-fishers, Upbit announced that its app and open API services were suspended due to increased traffic and delays.
In the early hours of the 4th local time, Yoon Suk-yeol announced the lifting of the emergency decree, just over 6 hours after he announced its implementation the previous night. The price of Bitcoin on Upbit slightly rebounded, reaching about $88,600 at the time of publication.
Juan Leon, a senior investment strategist at Bitwise, stated in a press release that the discount on Bitcoin at Korean exchanges reflects the 'congestion' of liquidity within centralized venues. He noted that although Bitcoin is a decentralized asset traded around the clock, chaos can still occur when 'special circumstances in a certain place' cause sudden restrictions.
XRP whale activity surged to an all-time high
According to BitPush data, the price of XRP tokens surged fourfold in the past month, becoming the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
CryptoQuant data shows that XRP whale activity hit an all-time high. CryptoQuant analyst Woominkyu noted that historically, significant spikes in whale XRP trading activity 'are closely related to XRP price peaks.' These trades have recently surged, pushing the coin price towards a peak of around $2.6, indicating that whales may be 'preparing for potential profit-taking or increased market activity.'
Analysts believe that the price momentum of XRP is driven by the launch of Ripple's stablecoin, potential changes in pro-crypto SEC leadership, and expectations for the approval of spot XRP ETFs. Recently, at least five companies have applied to list spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S., including Grayscale, WisdomTree, Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital.
