Won currency share 41%, Dollar 40%
Koreans flock to recent coin rally
The South Korean won has surpassed the US dollar for the first time ever in the share of fiat trading pairs for cryptocurrencies. A currency pair refers to two different currencies most actively traded in the foreign exchange market. This means that investors trading cryptocurrencies using the won have recently surged.
According to 'CC Data,' a virtual asset data provider, from September to the present, the share of the won in fiat currency pairs for Bitcoin reached 41%, narrowly surpassing the US dollar at 40%.
While the dollar's share plummeted from 51% to 40%, a drop of 11 percentage points (p), the won soared from 17% to 41%, an increase of 24%p. This can be interpreted as a significant recent increase in investors trading Bitcoin using the won.
At the beginning of this year, the price of Bitcoin was only around $16,000 (approximately 21 million KRW). However, since October, investor sentiment began to recover amid expectations for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and it is currently trading around $44,000 (approximately 57.86 million KRW). This represents a surge of over 170%.
Regarding this, the US financial media Bloomberg stated, "South Korea is already well known in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry," and mentioned that "Kwon Do-hyung, co-founder of Terraform Labs, the main party behind the Luna-Terra incident, was born and raised there."
The media added, "The Terra crash in May 2022 dealt a huge blow to Korean cryptocurrency investors, but many cryptocurrency companies still continue to offer opportunities in South Korea."
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin rally is ongoing. El Salvador, a Central American country that started investing in Bitcoin two years ago using government funds, has also recently reported that its investment portfolio has turned profitable.
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