Original title: The price difference between Upbit and Binance is as high as 150%, and the exchange darling Move is hyped by Koreans to have a "Kimchi Premium"
Original author: Leek, Foresight News
Reprinted by: Luke, Mars Finance
There is another phenomenon worthy of attention regarding the listing of cryptocurrencies on exchanges.
On the morning of December 10, the L2 project Move, which had just completed TGE, had a large price difference on major exchanges. It once soared to $2.6 on Upbit, while the price of Move on Binance was only around $1.2 at the same time, and other platforms such as OKX quoted it at $1.05. This is another "Kimchi Premium" incident.
As of press time, the price of Move on Upbit has fallen back to around US$0.9, while exchanges such as Binance are quoting it at US$1.05.
The cause of the incident can be traced back to December 9th. On that day, many exchanges including Binance, OKX, Upbit and others announced the launch of Movement tokens, most of which were at 8 pm UTC+8. Initially, Binance announced the launch time as 9 o'clock, but later changed it to 8 o'clock.
It is worth noting that the market has not seen the grand occasion of multiple exchanges listing the same currency at the same time for a long time. According to CoinGecko statistics, there are currently 39 Move trading pairs in more than 10 exchanges. The world's largest crypto exchanges Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, and Gate have all launched Move tokens, which the community jokingly calls the "Grand Slam."
It was the different launch times of various trading platforms that laid the groundwork for the subsequent kimchi premium.
According to data released by ai_9684xtpa, Korean trading platforms Upbit and Bithumb were originally scheduled to launch MOVE at the same time at 8 o'clock last night. Another smaller Korean trading platform Coinone unexpectedly launched it at 7:30 last night, and the opening price was as high as 998,500 won (about 700 US dollars).
This accident forced the two major Korean trading platforms Upbit and Bithumb to postpone the launch time of MOVE. Upbit chose to launch it at 09:35 on December 10, with an opening price of 2263 won (about 1.59 US dollars). Subsequently, there was a large price difference between MOVE on the chain, Korean trading platforms, and other leading trading platforms.
So is there an arbitrage opportunity?
After the price difference appeared, platforms including OKX and Bitget closed the withdrawal function of Move tokens, which led to the blocking of arbitrage channels between exchanges. Arbitrage on Korean exchanges requires relevant account support, which is also extremely difficult for traders in Greater China. There is no information yet on which trader has successfully made a profit through the Move price difference.
The premium of Move tokens also reflects the madness of Korean cryptocurrency speculators.
After Upbit launched Move, according to CoinGecko data, the 24-hour trading volume of MOVE on Upbit reached US$1.36 billion, accounting for 10.88% of the platform's total trading volume. Upbit also became the CEX with the largest trading volume of this currency.
Not only this token, South Korea’s cryptocurrency trading volume has begun to approach its stock market trading volume.
On December 10, Korean media koreaherald reported that due to the domestic political situation in South Korea, local investors flocked to alternative assets such as cryptocurrencies. As of 3:30 p.m. on December 6, the 24-hour trading volume of South Korea's top five cryptocurrency trading platforms Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax was US$14.59 billion. The amount is equivalent to 20.72 trillion won, almost twice the trading volume of the Korea Composite Stock Price Index on the same day of 10.48 trillion won.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the “kimchi premium” is once again emerging in the cryptocurrency market.
At the same time, what is the background of the Movement project? The fact that it has been favored by all exchanges can be seen from its financing scale.
Movement is a Move EVM Layer2 solution based on Ethereum. It is a Move virtual machine that is fully compatible with EVM, which means it is compatible with the Ethereum and Move ecosystems.
The Movement Labs team was founded in November 2022. The two founders of Movement Labs are Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, both of whom studied at Vanderbilt University in the United States. Most of the team members have worked in the Move ecosystem.
According to its founder Rushi, similar to Solana's Solang and Neon, Movement built Fractal, an EVM interpreter that runs on Move. Any Solidity code can be run and fully compiled into Move bytecode to start the virtual machine. In this way, Movement has the same parallelization capabilities as Aptos and Sui, and makes it compatible with EVM.
Movement Labs' financing was also extremely successful. Its Pre-seed round received $3.4 million in September 2023, led by Varys Capital, dao5, Blizzard Fund, Borderless Capital and other institutions. Its A round received $38 million in April 2024, led by Polychain Capital. Participating institutions include Hack VC, OKX Ventures, Placeholder, Archetype, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, dao 5 and Aptos Labs.
In addition, in May 2024, Binance Labs announced an investment in Movement, but the specific amount was not disclosed.
In addition to the VC team’s support, Movement’s TGE airdrop also satisfied many users.
On December 10, X user KuiGas posted that the Movement project, with its airdrop mechanism and the support of top exchanges, has become one of the best targets for ordinary people to counterattack in 2024. According to the valuation of 1.5 billion US dollars, the airdrop share is as high as 150 million US dollars. According to his calculations, Movement gives 10% of the airdrop share based on the valuation of 1.5 billion US dollars, and 150 million US dollars is given to about 1 million addresses, with an average of 150 US dollars.
