Upbit volume big dump 80%, even Koreans are no longer trading cryptocurrencies?

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency platform Upbit’s volume has fallen 80% compared to the same period last year, as retail investors shift to the stock market, AI concept stocks become the new favorites, and altcoins lose their biggest market makers. (Background recap: Jensen Huang dines with Samsung and Hyundai leaders, sparking Korea’s “Chicken Meme Stock” frenzy) (Additional context: Korean retail investors: We are obsessed with the dopamine rush from leverage; life is like a squid game) If you were to pick the world’s biggest coin traders, Koreans would definitely be on the list. Korea has long been one of the most enthusiastic countries for cryptocurrency, even inventing a term: “Kimchi Premium,” where Korean traders buy Bitcoin at prices up to 10% higher than the global average. However, by 2025, the trend has shifted. Korea’s largest crypto platform Upbit’s volume has plummeted 80% year-over-year, and activity in Bitcoin-Korean won trading pairs is far below previous years; instead, the Korean stock market is booming, with the KOSPI index soaring over 70% this year, continuously hitting new highs. On Kakao Talk and Naver forums, retail investors who once discussed altcoins daily are now talking about “AI semiconductor concept stocks.” The crypto ghost stories are arriving—Koreans are not trading coins as much anymore. Volume has halved, and Koreans are no longer trading coins. Over the past few years, Korea has been a key battleground in the global crypto market. For exchanges and project teams, this market offers high-net-worth clients—simply put, Koreans are often the main buyers of altcoins. Media and TV shows are filled with stories of Koreans staying up all night trading coins, getting rich quick, or blowing up their accounts. So, when someone tells you that retail investors in this “coin trading country” are no longer trading much, it might seem unbelievable. But the data doesn’t lie. The trading volume on Korea’s largest exchange, Upbit, has collapsed. As of November 2025, Upbit’s daily volume was only $1.78 billion, down from $9 billion in December 2024—a drop of 80%, with four consecutive months of decline. Upbit’s peak was on December 3, 2024, during Korea’s martial law night, with a daily volume of $27.45 billion, ten times the usual. That frenzy marked the peak; since then, the market has cooled rapidly, with volume collapsing off a cliff. Notably, the volatility of trading volume has also decreased significantly. During the peak frenzy at the end of 2024, daily volume fluctuated wildly between $5 billion and $27 billion; after entering 2025, most of the time, volume has stabilized between $2 billion and $4 billion, with much narrower swings. Korea’s second-largest exchange, Bithumb, has experienced a similar fate. In late 2024, Bithumb’s average daily volume was about $2.45 billion; by November 2025, it was only around $890 million—a roughly 69% decline, with liquidity nearly two-thirds lost. The two largest domestic exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, both experienced “volume decline” within the same period, indicating not only a cooling of trading but also a comprehensive retreat of Korean retail sentiment. Search data confirms this: on Korean Google search trends, the latest Bitcoin search index is 44, down 66% from the peak of 100 at the end of 2024. So, where did all the money go? The answer is: the stock market. This year’s Korean stock market has been dubbed a reincarnation of the 2017 Bitcoin bull run—a legendary frenzy. The KOSPI index hit a record high 17 times in October, breaking through 4,200 points, and rose nearly 21% in just October, the best monthly performance since 2001. Since the beginning of the year, the KOSPI has surged over 72%, leading all asset classes. In October, the average daily trading volume on KOSPI reached about 16.6 trillion won (~$115 billion), with a peak of 18.9 trillion won, a 44% increase from September, causing brokerage apps to lag. This is just the index—individual stocks are even more insane. Samsung Electronics has risen 100% since the start of the year; memory leader SK Hynix’s stock price increased 70% this quarter and over 240% since the beginning of the year, with a combined average daily trading volume of 4.59 trillion won (~$3.2 billion), accounting for 28% of the entire market. The market’s heat was so intense that even exchanges couldn’t keep up; on Monday night, Korean exchanges issued a “investment caution” notice for SK Hynix due to its rapid rise, causing the stock to plunge on Tuesday. AI has become the “national faith.” Once, Korea’s stock market was stagnant for over a decade, with little growth, and local media frequently predicted “no future” for Korean stocks. This led many Korean investors to switch to crypto or US stocks. So why did the Korean stock market turn around in 2025? The surge appears to be “retail frenzy,” but the underlying logic is clear: global AI waves + policy support + domestic capital inflow. Everyone knows that the spark for this rally comes from AI. ChatGPT ignited the second season of the global tech bubble, and Korea is perfectly positioned in the supply chain “arsenal.” Korea is a global leader in storage chips, with SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics nearly monopolizing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) markets, which are crucial for training AI large models. This means that whenever NVIDIA and AMD’s GPU shipments grow, Korean companies’ profits also soar. At the end of October, SK Hynix released its quarterly earnings: revenue of $17.1 billion, operating profit of $8 billion, up 62% year-over-year, both reaching record highs. More importantly, SK Hynix has secured customer demand for all DRAM and NAND capacity in 2026, with supply exceeding demand. Koreans have realized: AI is an American narrative, but Korea is profiting. If NVIDIA is the soul of US stocks, Korean retail investors have found their faith in SK Hynix. From crypto to stocks, they are still chasing that “tenfold dream,” but buying Samsung or SK also allows them to wear the “patriot” crown. Additionally, don’t overlook a key background: the Korean government is actively supporting the stock market. For a long time, Korean stocks have been undervalued due to the so-called “Korea Discount.” Family conglomerates’ monopoly, corporate governance issues, low shareholder returns—these factors have led to widespread undervaluation, with even Samsung Electronics trading below global peers, and SK Hynix’s PE ratio remaining at only 14 after a 240% rise. Since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office, he has launched a reform plan dubbed the “Korean version of the shareholder value revolution”: promoting higher dividends and buybacks; cracking down on chaebol cross-shareholdings; lowering capital gains taxes; and encouraging pension funds and retail investors to increase domestic holdings. This reform has been called a “national effort to eliminate the Korea Discount” by the media. As a result, foreign capital has begun to flow back, and local institutions and retail investors are also “coming home to buy stocks.” Of course, another reality is that there is nowhere else for the money to go. The Korean real estate market has been declining during the high-interest-rate cycle…