Aptos Surges 417% This Year, Emerging as a New Cryptocurrency Powerhouse?

Price Jumps from $3.4 to $17 Range
Coin Market Revives and Interest Grows Due to Increased Usage

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] The price of Aptos, which attracted market attention when it was listed on a virtual asset exchange last October, has surged sharply this year. The price, which was around $3.4 at the beginning of the year, soared to the $17 range.

According to the global cryptocurrency market tracking site CoinMarketCap, as of 2:42 PM on the 27th, the price of Aptos was recorded at $17.75 (approximately 21,868 KRW), down 4.12% from the previous day. Although Aptos showed a decline of about 4% on that day, it represents a 417% increase compared to $3.43 (approximately 4,225 KRW) at the beginning of the year. Aptos prices began to rise from the 9th, surpassing $10 on the 21st. The previous day, it reached as high as $19.86, marking the highest price since its issuance.

The reason Aptos prices have skyrocketed like this is analyzed to be due to the revival of the virtual asset market amid expectations of a slowdown in the pace of recent interest rate hikes, attracting investor interest. The reason Aptos draws attention is that its ecosystem, where the coin circulates, has relatively high utility. Aptos is a coin expected to solve the slow speed problem of existing Layer 1 blockchains such as Ethereum, which support contract execution using blockchain technology. It adopts a consensus algorithm called AptosBFT, characterized by low network load and fast consensus speed, and also possesses BlockSTM (Block Software Transactional Memory), a parallel processing technology that processes only interrelated transaction specifications.

Additionally, it is actively building an ecosystem in the non-fungible token (NFT) field, and the participation of former Meta employees, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in Aptos development is viewed positively by the market. For these reasons, Aptos prices have surged, and the trading volume, which was $46.75 million (approximately 57.6 billion KRW) at the beginning of the year, increased 46.62 times to $2.17958 billion (2.6845 trillion KRW) on the 26th.

However, as reports emerged that domestic investors drove the price rise trend, there are calls for caution against potential investment damages. Decrypt reported that the rapid rise in Aptos prices was due to arbitrage exploiting the kimchi premium, where prices on domestic virtual asset exchanges are higher than overseas. It also explained that about half of the Aptos trading volume on the 26th came from the domestic exchange Upbit. In fact, on that day, posts related to Aptos investment were easily found in coin-related communities, and prices on Upbit were higher than those aggregated by CoinMarketCap.

Professor Hong Ki-hoon of Hongik University Business School said, "The recent rise in Aptos prices appears to be due to factors such as speed and technological advances that were previously reflected in the price," adding, "However, as trading volume increases and people trade blindly just because others are buying, there is a risk of being stuck at the peak, so a conservative approach is necessary."