Whales Control Over 90% of Trading on South Korea’s Crypto Exchanges, Data Shows
A brand new report reveals that large-scale traders, categorised as “whales,” account for over 90% of buying and selling on South Korea’s centralized exchanges.
While on-chain knowledge has lengthy recommended that crypto whales drive the DeFi market, analysts have now launched the primary goal statistics. These statistics shed gentle on the size and patterns of whale traders on centralized exchanges.
Whales Dominate the Market in South Korea
The workplace of lawmaker Lee Heon-seung of the People Power Party released the info on Tuesday. The report defines the highest 10% of customers on every change as “whale traders.” It then measures their share of the whole buying and selling quantity as “buying and selling focus.”
The authentic supply of the info is the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) of South Korea.
According to the info, Bithumb had the best buying and selling focus of whale traders among the many 5 largest home exchanges supporting Korean Won buying and selling.
Its focus was 97.97% within the first half of the yr. This means the underside 90% of customers on the change accounted for simply 2.03% of the whole buying and selling quantity.
The prime exchanges by buying and selling focus have been GOPAX (97.95%), Coinone (97.54%), Korbit (97.52%), and Upbit (89.36%). In phrases of buying and selling quantity, Upbit recorded the best at ₩1,488.6 trillion, adopted by Bithumb at ₩589 trillion. Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax ranked third by way of fifth, respectively.
Concentration Rises with Market Cap
The report additionally discovered that buying and selling focus was larger for large-cap belongings. Even smaller-cap cryptocurrencies, nonetheless, nonetheless confirmed a focus of over 60%.
A month-to-month evaluation of the ten lowest market-cap belongings from January 2023 to June 2025 revealed that Bithumb had the best buying and selling focus at 83.8%. In distinction, Upbit had the bottom at 66.91%.
For a very long time, new cryptocurrency listings on Korean exchanges have been related to a “listing effect.” This has brought on a major value improve. Listing a venture on a serious Korean exchange has typically been thought-about a blessing.
While individuals broadly noticed this as an emblem of the collective shopping for energy of Korean traders, the info recommend it could have been an irregular phenomenon. This phenomenon was probably pushed by a small quantity of whale traders.
A Shifting Market
Industry specialists attribute the high focus to the distinctive traits of the Korean crypto market. In this market, centralized exchanges solely enable spot buying and selling, and the bulk of customers are retail traders.
The South Korean Financial Services Commission plans to permit crypto change accounts for as much as 3,500 establishments. This change will apply to skilled traders registered within the second half of this yr.
It stays to be seen whether or not Korea will proceed to be considered a “holy land for crypto listings” after this transformation.
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