Crypto Trading in South Korea Is Dying; Steep Market Crash And Hacks Are Turning Traders Away

It seems that crypto traders in Korea have slowly started to move away from it. Trading across the board has considerably less volume in the past few months. Kimchi’s premium has all but vanished, heralding the collapse of various minor cryptocurrencies across the Korean market. South Korean traders are simply not in the mood to buy anymore, at least for the most part.

Dovey Wan, PrimitiveCrypto’s co-founder, commented about the matter. She stated that the Korea Market is “pretty dead.” She said that, even with the fiat on-ramp, the Korean trading community is experiencing an extreme case of fatigue. She expressed this all via twitter.

Korea market is pretty dead … even with fiat on-ramp the highly speculative community there is VERY fatigued due to low volatility too (and it’s saturated long before imo)

The fact that Bitthumb started Bitthumb global initiative to expand globally says so 🧐

— Dovey 以德服人 Wan 🗝 🦖 (@DoveyWan) October 21, 2019

Bithumb, one of Korea’s most powerful trading platforms, led the Korean Market to lead Bitcoin’s highest price peak in history. One BTC was worth $20,000 in Korean won, with altcoins popping up there gaining a massive boost as well. The Korean market was a very profitable one indeed, and many an ICO projects relied on it as a source of price discovery. Most of those altcoins have lost almost all their value, by now. Such is the way of the beast.

The real nail in the coffin could be considered Bitcoin Cash’s (BCH) wild ride in Korean markets. They held a price well above $2500 before crashing and crashing hard. A bear market followed shortly after, spelling an end for most of the speculative appetite. As the final insult, South Korean exchanges were under cyberattack, reportedly by the Lazarus group, a group of hackers working for North Korea. It wasn’t a fun time to do business.

Obviously, the altcoin market took a decent hit from this, with a few exceptions, of course. With the lack of anything good happening, exchanges are moving out into new frontiers to try and earn their money. With even giants like Binance seeing significant volume drops, it’s somewhat understandable. In the past, Altcoins had served as a way to increase activity, but as Korea’s market scaled-down, so did the altcoins. Multiple pairs remained completely inactive, heralding imminent delisting.

In another tweet, Wan pointed out that even the chat groups are being abandoned. If they’re not abandoned, they switch topics to something else entirely unless they’ve already been disbanded.

Most of the wechat crypto groups are now pretty much dead. The alive ones are becoming groups of sports discussing, food pics sharing, refund yelling, market cursing, alternative asset speculating, tindering, etc etc

Exactly like 12 months ago when BTC was ranging above 6k

— Dovey 以德服人 Wan 🗝 🦖 (@DoveyWan) October 21, 2019

An Altcoin Winter

Observations show that the so-called “Altcoin Season” won’t happen any time soon. In fact, a purge is happening as many minor altcoins lost any and all liquidity and value, with no hope of recovery. It’s how the cookie crumbles, and it’s a bitter cookie, to begin with.

The fiat on-ramp for the Korean won was insufficient to keep the money flowing. It was only possible for locals who could open bank accounts in Korea to even access it, after all. While the Korean won was once the most active BTC pairing, it now only adds 1.64% to overall BTC trading.

Even as the winter overtook South Korea’s trading, there is still a chance for a thaw. Stablecoins, asset-backed cryptocurrencies, are seeing a growing amount of money flowing between them. It may not be much, but it will help a lot.