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<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStablecoin (PG) [Photo: Yonhap News Agency]<\/p>\n
South Korea’s crypto market is broadly weakening, with investors’ holdings and trading value plunging to about half of peak levels, while demand for dollar-based stablecoins continues to post clear gains.<\/p>\n
Data submitted by the Bank of Korea to lawmaker Cha Gyu-geun (\ucc28\uaddc\uadfc) of the Rebuilding Korea Party on the National Assembly’s Finance and Economy Planning Committee showed domestic crypto holdings totalled 60.6 trillion won as of end-February this year.<\/p>\n
The figure is the sum of crypto asset prices held by investors with accounts at South Korea’s five largest crypto exchanges \u2014 Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit, Coinone and Gopax \u2014 based on market prices at month-end. The amount of crypto holdings rose steadily from 50.6 trillion won at end-August 2024 and peaked at 121.8 trillion won in January last year, before shrinking to less than half by end-February this year.<\/p>\n
Trading volumes and standby funds also contracted. Average daily crypto trading value rose to 17.1 trillion won at end-December 2024, but stood at about 4.5 trillion won at end-February this year. Won deposits, also seen as standby investment funds at crypto exchanges, fell to 7.8 trillion won at end-February this year from 10.7 trillion won at end-December 2024.<\/p>\n
Stablecoin holdings, however, gradually rose from 88.5 billion won at end-July 2024 and peaked at 872.3 billion won at end-December last year. As of end-February this year, they stayed relatively large at 607.1 billion won.<\/p>\n
Market experts cited a shift of funds driven by a stock market rally and exchange rate volatility as reasons for the trend.<\/p>\n
Hong Sung-wook (\ud64d\uc131\uc6b1), an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, explained: “A shift of investment funds driven by a rally in the domestic stock market and falling crypto prices likely had a big impact on the decline in domestic crypto holdings.”<\/p>\n
Kim Min-seung (\uae40\ubbfc\uc2b9), head of Korbit’s research centre, said: “Moves in the won-dollar exchange rate appear to have affected demand for stablecoin investment.” He added: “With most coins also weakening on overseas exchanges, it could also be seen as investment funds that went abroad returning to the domestic market.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stablecoin (PG) [Photo: Yonhap News Agency] South Korea’s crypto market is broadly weakening, with investors’ holdings and trading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[845,2819,846,2821,2820,2818],"class_list":{"0":"post-3182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bank-of-korea","8":"tag-bank-of-korea","9":"tag-bithumb","10":"tag-bok","11":"tag-coinone","12":"tag-korbit","13":"tag-upbit"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}