Bithumb Launches Fee-Free Campaign to Upturn Upbit
South Korean crypto alternate Bithumb has launched a large-scale fee-free marketing campaign to broaden its market share aggressively.
Bithumb introduced on Thursday that it’s going to apply zero buying and selling charges to 200 cryptocurrencies on its Korean Won market, efficient at 6:00 pm KST(09:00 am UTC) and operating till additional discover.
Strategic Shift to Attract Users
While transactions for these free-fee tokens will depend towards Bithumb’s membership tiers, they won’t qualify for buying and selling factors or maker rewards.
This marketing campaign stands out from earlier occasions as a result of it’s utilized mechanically with no separate registration. Bithumb beforehand held related fee-free occasions in 2023 and 2024, however these required customers to register a coupon to take part.
Industry analysts view this transfer as a strategic effort to acquire home market share amid heightened competitors. While the nation’s largest alternate, Upbit, nonetheless dominates the Korean Won market, Bithumb has been quickly closing the hole, displaying sturdy development in buying and selling quantity and new customers. This large-scale fee-waiver coverage is seen as a transparent technique to actively entice customers and speed up its pursuit of Upbit’s market dominance.
According to knowledge from Mobile Index on September 16, Upbit’s market share was 59.08% final month, whereas Bithumb’s was 33.42%, indicating a narrowing hole between the 2 exchanges. On September 9, Bithumb’s share even reached 45.6%, closing the distinction with Upbit (51.6%) to simply six proportion factors.
Just a yr or two in the past, the hole was a lot broader. In September 2023, Upbit held a dominant 60.7% market share, greater than 3 times Bithumb’s 17.6%. However, the challenger started its comeback that December, reaching 21.7% and in the end climbing over 10 proportion factors in only one yr to hit 31.46% by November of final yr.
How Bithumb Gained Ground on Upbit
Bithumb enhanced consumer engagement in 2024 by way of UI upgrades, game-mission rewards, auto-trading instruments, and Bitcoin dominance indicators. In 2025, it shifted to a extra aggressive market stance, listing more new tokens than Upbit and specializing in competitively traded “worth cash,” underscoring Bithumb’s push to slender the market-share hole.
Upbit can also be actively defending its market dominance by significantly increasing the number of coins it lists. However, it didn’t defend its market lead by pioneering listings however by following Bithumb’s strikes, including most of the tokens Bithumb listed first. This reactive technique contrasts with Bithumb’s aggressive, proactive strategy.
In South Korea, crypto accounts in home exchanges account for roughly 30% of the inhabitants. According to data from Kaiko Research, the South Korean Won (KRW) has established itself because the second most used fiat forex in cryptocurrency buying and selling, solely behind the US greenback.
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