New Coinhills Data Shows Upbit Was Only South Korean Crypto Exchange To Post A Profit In 2018

Only One Of The Four Largest Crypto Exchanges In Korea Profited During 2018

South Korea may be one of the biggest markets in the world but the crypto bear market showed its claws to it nevertheless. The fourth most active crypto market in the world has seen three of its top 4 exchanges get losses last year, as only one of them was able to continue working in a profitable way. From Upbit, Coinone, Bithumb and Korbit, only Upbit recorded some kind of profit.

Bithumb was the greatest loser of the year. The exchange managed to lose 205 billion Korean won (around $180 million USD). The major reason for the losses was the falling price of cryptocurrencies. Korbit fared somewhat “better” and it had a net loss of 45.8 Korean won ($40 million USD), while Coinone lost 5.8 billion Korean won ($5 million USD).

Upbit was, surprisingly, the only company to be able to have a net profit this time. The company earned 143 billion Korean won (around $120 million USD). How what the company able do it? Basically, it had a very lower level of crypto holdings when compared to its rivals.

It is no surprise that the companies fared so bad last year. Some of them were already announcing losses before and Bithumb even fired around half of its staff, diminishing the total number of employees from 310 to 150.

Upbit will now join the very special team of companies to survive the crypto winter with profits. Binance, which had a net profit of around $78 million USD in the first quarter of 2019 alone.

Binance has affirmed several times that the problems of the crypto bear market were not affecting the exchange, so it is, without any doubt, one of the most profitable exchanges in the world right now.

Nobody is actually surprised that Upbit and Binance are seeing such strong profits. Both companies are very structured and have been reporting awesome financial results since last year when the market is simply crumbling around them.

According to reports from HowMuch, Binance has a daily revenue of at least 3.48 million USD while Upbit has 3.42 million USD. They are followed by Huobi ($2.29 million USD), Bittrex ($2.2 million USD) and Bithumb ($1.83 million USD). As you see, not even earning that much per day is helping Bithumb to face the adversities of the market.

Binance wants has a target profit of half to a billion USD this year, though, so it seems that the main rival that the company has to beat is itself since it is so successful.