Key Takeaways
- XRP led Upbit spot volume at $145.6 million on Oct. 15, ahead of BTC at $126.5 million.
- XRP still topped Upbit on Oct. 16 with $108.3 million traded, though its price sat near $1.34.
- South Korea’s FIU blocked 27 offshore exchanges this week, steering more traders toward Upbit.
The Numbers
The first snapshot circulated yesterday evening (U.S. time) ranked Upbit’s top three spot pairs by 24-hour volume:
- XRP/KRW: $145.57 million, 11.74% of Upbit’s volume
- BTC/KRW: $126.50 million, 10.20%
- ETH/KRW: $92.09 million, 7.43%
Bitcoin.com News checked the numbers again more than seven hours later and at 04:36 UTC earlier today, Upbit market data still had XRP in first place with $108.3 million in 24-hour volume, against $95.3 million for bitcoin and $62.7 million for ether.
No Premium, Just Volume
The usual giveaway of a Korean retail frenzy is the “kimchi premium,” where coins trade at a markup on local won exchanges compared with global venues. There isn’t much of one here, as Upbit’s XRP price converted to about $1.34, while XRP changed hands near $1.336 on Binance, a gap of roughly 0.3%.
As a result, the development is more of a rotation story rather than a mania one and Korean traders are moving their money into XRP rather than bidding it up at any price.
XRP closed at $1.42 on Oct. 11 and has spent the week sliding, touching an intraday low of $1.29 on Oct. 15 before recovering to its current range of around $1.34.
Heavy volume on a falling price can mean accumulation, or it can mean holders finally heading for the exits. The order books don’t say which.
Why Korea, and Why Now?
The country has had an unusually busy month on the Ripple front, with the company’s institutional custody and tokenization partnership with Meritz Securities being one of the several moves Bitcoin.com News tracked in Ripple’s Korean expansion (which now runs from remittances to government bonds). Meritz is also eyeing tokenized deals on Canton.
The local market structure is also shifting as South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit blocked access to 27 offshore exchanges, including Kucoin and MEXC, earlier this week.
What the Whales Were Doing Elsewhere
The Korean volume picture sits awkwardly next to the global one and Bitcoin.com News reported early Friday that XRP whales moved 1.67 billion tokens to Binance, a seven-month high for whale inflows.
U.S. funds were flat at best, as XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw net flows of minus $104,510 yesterday on $24.79 million in trading volume. ETF holders are already sitting on a $230 million paper loss while Evernorth, the new Nasdaq-listed XRP treasury, is also deep in the red on its recent $214 million buy.
So while global whales are sending coins to exchanges, U.S. funds aren’t adding any (all while Korean retail is trading XRP harder than bitcoin). Regardless, someone in that chain is buying what the whales are selling.
