The institutional grade cryptocurrency market data provider Kaiko’s latest “Data Debrief” research states that the last week saw the trading volume of the Big-4 cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea peak beyond $4 billion. Along with that, Kaiko’s data also showed that the market share of altcoins grew to “a multi-year high of 95%” during the same period.
The increase in the trading volumes of the Big-4 cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea (Korbit, Bithumb, Upbit, and Coinone) was reportedly fueled by altcoins. In the last two years, altcoins claimed over 80% of all trade volumes on the exchanges in question, stated Kaiko.
Sharing the insight, Chinese reported Colin Wu tweeted:
According to Kaiko, in last week, the trading volume of the four major exchanges in South Korea reached the highest level this year, and the altcoin market share rose to a multi-year high of 95%. On most non-Korean exchanges, BTC and ETH account for about 40% to 50%.…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 11, 2023
Kaiko’s cryptocurrency market analysis showed that Korean markets’ share of altcoins considerably “oscillated” from “82% in January to a ten-month low of 68% in mid-March.” Still, relative to other exchanges, Kaiko stated that “non-Korean exchanges” usually see “BTC and ETH account for between ~40/50% of trade volume.”
Kaiko noted that the South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges’ market structure is “anomalous,” serving the trading objectives of “small and illiquid altcoins.” Tough regulation in South Korea tends to make “price arbitrage difficult, creating price discrepancies,” Kaiko opined in its Medium blog post.
Other noteworthy updates shared by Kaiko in the said research debrief include the BTC hitting the “$30k mark for the first time since June 2022.” While the peer-to-peer exchange Paxful has reportedly announced “it would be suspending operations,” the recently released illicit finance report from the U.S. Treasury focuses on risks in DeFi, Kaiko stated.
