Investors in South Korea are paying 3% more to buy bitcoin than investors in the United States, looking for a way to protect their money from a sharp decline in the value of the Korean won, according to CryptoQuant data.
Bitcoin is priced at 145,000,000 won ($98,600) on Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, compared to around $96,700 on Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN).
The gap comes after South Korea's parliament voted to impeach Prime Minister and interim President Han Duck-soo, just weeks after President Yoon Suk-yeol was ousted, sending the won to a 15-year low against the dollar.
“The current crisis is primarily about election fraud and the erosion of trust in the National Election Commission of Korea,” Jeff Park, head of Alpha Strategy at Bitwise, explained in a post on the X platform. “The use of impeachment as a political tool, coupled with allegations of foreign interference, highlights the fragility of democracy in the face of disinformation. This is not just a Korean crisis, but a warning to democracies around the world.”
Cryptocurrency price now:
Bitcoin is trading at $95,155 per coin now, up 0.71%, while Ethereum is also struggling to surpass the $3,400 level as it is currently trading at $3,396.67, up 1.5%.
Solana is currently up 5.45% at $195,310 and Cardano is up 1.68% at $0.8886.
As for meme coins, Dogecoin rose by 3.08%, Shiba Inu by 2.14%, and Baby by 2.57%.
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