As the Korean stock market cools down, why did Upbit and Bithumb start a currency war?
Author: Zen, PANews
Original title: After losing trading volume, South Korea's two major crypto exchanges started a cryptocurrency war
At a time when the Korean stock market is cooling down, the listing competition between the two major crypto exchanges Upbit and Bithumb is starting to heat up.
In the past month, Upbit and Bithumb's coin listing pace has accelerated markedly. Both exchanges have added 17 new won trading assets, which is significantly higher than the regular monthly average of 6 to 10 types in the first half of the year. In a context where overall trading volume is still sluggish, a cryptocurrency war has begun again around existing capital and retail investors' attention.
South Korea's stock market's best summer, crypto trading ushered in a major cooling
In the first half of this year, the Korean stock and cryptocurrency markets followed two diametrically opposite curves.
According to Korea Exchange (KRX) data, KOSPI's average daily turnover in January was 27.06 trillion won, rising to 32.23 trillion won in February, setting a historical record at the time. However, after entering May, the market was completely crazy. KOSPI's average daily turnover reached 50.22 trillion won, and continued to maintain a high level of 50.35 trillion won in June, nearly doubling from the beginning of the year.
This round of trading is largely concentrated on large semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which have jointly created an obvious upward market and wealth effect. Against the backdrop of KOSPI's rapid rise, retail capital is flocking to the stock market. As a result, domestic crypto trading in South Korea, which already lacked market conditions, shrank further and continued to cool down during the “best summer in Korea.”
According to CoinGecko data, the total trading volume of the five Korean won exchanges of Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax in the second quarter of this year was about US$146.43 billion, down 49.5% from US$289.69 billion in the same period in 2025. Among them, Upbit's trading volume of the two major exchanges declined 54% year over year, and Bithumb declined 41.7% year over year.
In the first half of this year, for Korean investors, the hottest and most popular market today was clearly stocks rather than cryptocurrencies. For exchanges, even if a few more altcoins and a few activities are launched at this stage, they cannot compete with the stock market, which is having a strong wealth effect.
At this stage, Upbit and Bithumb's coin listing pace remained normal or slowed down, basically maintaining 6 to 10 types per month. In the second quarter, which was the craziest in the Korean stock market, Bithumb seemed to avoid the sharp edge of the stock market. Only 22 new tokens were added, which is far lower than the 33 in the same period in 2025.
The “inflection point” has arrived, and the two major exchanges have started a cryptocurrency war
Entering the third quarter, things began to change.
After the peak in May and June, KOSPI's average daily turnover fell to 36.88 trillion won in July, down about 26.8% from the previous month; in August, the average daily turnover as of August 9, the average daily turnover fell further to 26.28 trillion won, which is already lower than the level at the beginning of the year.
Furthermore, according to Korea Exchange data, the share of individual investors in KOSPI's turnover fell from 48.19% in January to 31.23% in July. Investors' reserves, which are regarded as “standby funds” in the securities market, also declined by about 25.5% over two months from a high of 139.69 trillion won on June 4 to 104.14 trillion won at the end of July.
From a surge in wealth to “those who don't buy stocks are the winners”, after experiencing a frenzy in the first half of the year, the share of retail transactions in the stock market and off-market standby capital began to cool down from a high point.
It was during this period that Upbit and Bithumb's coin listing pace began to accelerate markedly.
From the beginning of July to August 11, Upbit added a total of 17 new won trading assets in just over a month, as well as 8 new coins that can only be traded in BTC and USDT. Compared to the monthly listing of about 6 to 10 new coins in the first half of the year, this is equivalent to the normal amount for at least the past two months. Meanwhile, Bithumb also maintained a high frequency of coin listings, and also added 17 types of won trading assets.
PanNews learned that compared to previous rumors in the industry, the recent intensive listing, some projects said they also learned about it afterwards, and that they did not pay the coin listing fee.
We don't know whether the management of the two exchanges will decide the number of coins listed based on changes in KOSPI's turnover. However, from the perspective of user competition, this time window is clearly more favorable than the first half of the year.
When the stock market has a large number of rising targets and high volatility every day, relying on the new currency to grab the attention of retail investors is completely futile. However, when the money-making effect of the stock market weakens, exchanges re-attract investors with high risk appetite through new assets, short-term price fluctuations, and incentive activities, and the marginal effects may increase.
According to CoinGecko data, as of August 11, Upbit's total turnover was about US$492 million, an increase of 116.7% over the past 24 hours. Among them, new Korean won trading assets such as CAP, GRVT, HOME, and GEOD have entered the top trading volume since July. Only 9 recently added assets have contributed nearly 20% of the platform's 24-hour trading volume.
Under the competition in the stock market, the stock market is becoming more and more convergent
However, the frequent listing of new coins can create new trading hotspots, but it is not enough to reverse the overall contraction of the Korean crypto market.
From July 1 to 27, the cumulative trading volume of the top five domestic exchanges in Korea also decreased by 16.9% compared to the same period last month. Over the same period, Upbit's trading volume fell 10.0% to about 11.6943 trillion won, but its market share increased from 62.3% to 67.4%.
This means that at least at this stage, the transaction demand brought about by the new currency is more reflected in a redistribution within the stock market rather than a large-scale return of overall incremental capital.
For the Korea Exchange, this kind of stock competition is also particularly important. Upbit and Bithumb rely almost entirely on transaction fees, which determines how much they rely on trading volume more than the world's largest exchanges.
As a result, in the current market competition, the assets chosen by Upbit and Bithumb are becoming more and more similar.
According to statistics announced by DAXA and the exchange, in the second quarter of this year, Upbit and Bithumb reached 9 types of assets listed on the same day; if projects launched by both parties were counted several days apart, it reached 14 types. Over the same period, the two companies together accounted for about 96% of the five largest Korean won exchanges.
Therefore, there are actually two levels of competition in this currency exchange war.
On the one hand, Upbit and Bithumb need to cover popular assets in the market as soon as possible to prevent demand for new transactions from being monopolized by each other; on the other hand, after the overall contraction of the Korean crypto market, what the two exchanges really needed to compete was essentially the limited risk capital and attention of Korean retail investors.
Although these measures are unable to re-prosper the entire crypto market, by continuously creating new trading targets and short-term opportunities, keeping a limited amount of capital on its own platform as much as possible is probably the best result that can be obtained right now for exchanges.
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