Koreans Trading XRP & XLM Heavily With Over 5% Premium, At Times Surpassing Even BTC & ETH

In the US market, the SEC charging Ripple and its two top executives for allegedly selling unregistered securities has led the cryptocurrency exchanges to suspend XRP trading temporarily.

However, this isn't the case in other parts of the world.

Given that XRP is trading just around $0.32 XRP -3.44% XRP / USD XRPUSD $ 0.38
-$0.01-3.44% Volume 1.08 b Change -$0.01 Open $0.38 Circulating 50.95 b Market Cap 19.38 b 1 y Bitcoin and Ether Breaks Trend With Outflows While Altcoins Continue to See Inflows 1 y SBI Holdings to Launch Japan’s First Crypto Fund; Including BTC, ETH, DOT, LINK, LTC, XRP & BCH 1 y Ledger Announces Integration with FTX and Coinbase, Launching Crypto Life Debit Card , nowhere near its all-time high of $3, the retail sees it as a chance to pick up some cheap crypto assets with Bitcoin becoming too costly at above $41,000.

On the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, as of writing, XRP/KRW has been the most traded asset with $1,112,585,559 in volume in the past 24 hours, as per CoinMarkCap. The digital asset is also trading 5.4% higher than what it is trading at Binance and Coinbase Pro.

The same is the case for another exchange Bithumb, on which XRP/KRW is the second heavily traded pair after Bitcoin/KRW with $426,779,536 and $578,740,959 in volume, respectively.

Meanwhile, on Binance and Coinbase Pro, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most traded crypto assets.

It is because of the heavy capital controls that have “led to higher market prices offshore in those regions as they are used to exit the local fiat system.”

Interestingly, Stellar (XLM) is being just as heavily traded, which has surged 150% in value in the past week XLM 0.50% Stellar / USD XLMUSD $ 0.09
$0.000.50% Volume 77.51 m Change $0.00 Open $0.09 Circulating 26.5 b Market Cap 2.35 b 1 y Grayscale Adds Avalanche (AVAX) and Terra (LUNA) to its Investment Product Consideration List 1 y Circle’s Stablecoin USDC Launches on Hedera Hashgraph's Network 1 y Robinhood Cites Regulatory Actions or Policies Towards Crypto as Business Risk in Filing .

Not only are Koreans investing in XLM with Upbit recording $490,824,986 and Bithumb $125,930,072 in volume to become one of the five most traded digital assets, but it is also the third most traded asset on Coinbase Pro.

XLM is also trading at a 5.3% kimchi premium.

As we reported, this popular kimchi premium that first appeared in late December is getting strong as the cryptocurrency market rallies hard.

The top two digital assets, Bitcoin and Ethereum, are trading at a premium of about 4.7%. While BTC/USD is trading at $41,032 on Coinbase, on Bithumb and Upbit, it is above $43,000. As for ETH, the difference is $50.

During the bull run of 2017, this kimchi premium went as high as 33%, so it is just the beginning.