Trading on South Korea’s largest won-based crypto exchanges has fallen over the past year as the equity market rallied. Cointelegraph compared CoinGecko’s historical 24-hour volume data for Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax across seven-day windows in July 2025 and July 2026, and found steep year-on-year contractions. Using a simple, unweighted approach that treated each venue equally, the average decline was about 77%. On a combined basis, average daily volume dropped about 89%, to $305 million from $2.82 billion over the comparable July 2025 period. Yahoo Finance data showed the KOSPI rose 114.44% over the 12 months to 22 July, even after pulling back from a June peak.
ZDNet Korea also put daily volume across the five exchanges down 88% year-on-year on Monday, and linked weaker fee income to asset sales by some platforms. Korbit raised about 1.6 billion won (around $1 million) by selling 15 Bitcoin and 60 Ether. A Tiger Research report published on CoinGecko and updated on 17 April pointed to retail fatigue and a rotation of attention, while describing a transition in which institutions position around won-denominated stablecoins, tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) and exchange investments ahead of final legislation.
Retail Capital Moves from Crypto to Equities
We are seeing a massive shift in capital as South Korean retail investors move away from crypto and flood into the booming domestic stock market. With the KOSPI index surging over 114% in the last year, derivative traders should focus on KOSPI 200 futures to ride this equity momentum. Although the index has experienced a minor pullback from its June peak, the underlying liquidity makes equity derivatives a much safer bet than struggling local crypto platforms in the coming weeks.
Adapting Crypto Derivatives Strategies Amid Falling Volume
For those of us trading crypto derivatives, the 89% drop in South Korean trading volume signals that we must adjust our arbitrage strategies. The famous “Kimchi premium”—which historically allowed traders to profit from higher crypto prices on Korean exchanges by an average of 3% to 5%—is likely to compress significantly due to this lack of retail demand. We should look to short volatility on won-based altcoin pairs, as the absence of retail speculation will prevent sudden, retail-driven price spikes.
As retail fatigue grows, we expect institutional players to start dominating the market through tokenized real-world assets and regulated stablecoins. Derivative traders should pivot their crypto portfolios toward highly liquid, institutional-grade instruments like Bitcoin and Ether options on global exchanges rather than local platforms. By focusing on these macro assets, we can protect our capital from the liquidity squeeze that is currently forcing smaller regional exchanges to liquidate their own holdings.
