Due to the Luna incident and the bankruptcy of the global virtual asset exchange FTX, the domestic virtual asset market capitalization is estimated to have evaporated by about 4 trillion won in half a year.
According to the "2022 Second Half Virtual Asset Business Operators Survey Results" announced by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission on the 19th, as of the end of last year, the domestic circulating virtual asset market capitalization was 19 trillion won, a decrease of 4 trillion won (16%) compared to the end of June last year. The average daily trading volume was 3 trillion won, showing a sharp decline of 43% during the same period.
The sales revenue of trading operators in the second half was 578.8 billion won, down 427.2 billion won (42%) compared to the first half of last year, and operating profit sharply decreased by 498 billion won (80%) to 127.4 billion won.
The total number of circulating virtual asset types, including duplicates, was 1,362, which is 9 fewer (0.7%) than in the first half.
The Financial Services Commission stated, "The contraction of the real economy due to rising interest rates and inflation, as well as the loss of trust caused by negative events such as the Luna incident and FTX bankruptcy, affected the virtual asset market."
The average fee rate was 0.16%, the same as in the first half, but the Financial Services Commission pointed out that it is a high level compared to the stock market (0.0027%) and urged efforts for improvement.
The won deposits, which are pending trading funds, also showed a continuous downward trend. As of the end of last year, it was 3.6 trillion won, a decrease of about 2.3 trillion won (38%) compared to the end of June last year.
Additionally, the number of users who completed customer verification and are able to trade was 6.27 million, a decrease of 630,000 (9%) during the same period.
Compared to non-mainstream virtual assets, the investment proportion in major virtual assets such as Bitcoin (the global top 10 virtual assets) increased by 11 percentage points compared to the first half, showing a preference trend for globally top assets. The number of new virtual asset trading supports (listings) in the won market in the second half was 32, a 72% decrease compared to the first half.
By age group, those in their 30s accounted for the largest share at 30%, followed by those in their 40s (28%), 20s (21%), 50s (16%), and 60s (5%). By gender, male users were more than twice as many as female users.
The majority of users (4.35 million, 69%) held less than 500,000 won. The proportion of users holding virtual assets worth more than 10 million won was 6% (380,000 people).
Looking at the reasons for trading suspension (delisting) by exchanges, project risk accounted for the largest share at 50%. This was followed by investor protection risk (22%) and market risk (22%). The transaction amount between domestic exchanges subject to the "Travel Rule" (transmission of sender and receiver information for withdrawals over 1 million won) was 7.5 trillion won, about 25% of the total withdrawal amount (30.6 trillion won).
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