The worth of cryptocurrency held by South Korean buyers greater than halved over the previous 12 months, falling from 121.8 trillion gained ($83.3 billion) on the finish of January 2025 to 60.6 trillion gained ($41.4 billion) by the tip of February 2026.
Every day buying and selling volumes throughout the nation’s 5 main exchanges, together with Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit, Coinone and Gopax, additionally took successful, collapsing to $3 billion by February in comparison with $11.6 billion in December 2024, Korean outlet The Chosun Every day reportedciting information the Financial institution of Korea submitted to Rep. Cha Gyu-geun of the Rebuilding Korea Occasion.
Received deposits held at exchanges, a proxy for investor dry powder, additionally fell from 10.7 trillion gained at end-2024 to 7.8 trillion gained. The drop is attributed to a mix of falling crypto costs and capital flowing into the inventory market.
Stablecoins bucked the pattern. Holdings climbed from $60 million in July 2024 to a peak of $597 million in December earlier than easing to $41 million in February, a much smaller decline than the broader crypto market.
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Tighter AML guidelines threaten to push buyers away
The market contraction comes as regulators put together to tighten oversight. Monetary authorities plan to implement revised AML guidelines in August that may require crypto transactions above 10 million gained involving abroad exchanges or personal wallets to be mechanically flagged as suspicious.
High Korean exchanges by quantity. Supply: CoinGecko
Business physique DAXA has pushed backarguing the rule is disproportionate and will drive customers to offshore platforms like Binance. The business physique stated the proposal might improve suspicious transaction reviews from South Korea’s 5 largest exchanges by 85 instances, from about 63,000 circumstances final 12 months to over 5.4 million, making compliance tough in apply.
Debate over the federal government’s deliberate 22% crypto tax, set for 2027, can be intensifying. On Thursday, South Korea’s Finance Ministry confirmed for the first time {that a} 22% tax on crypto positive aspects will take impact as scheduled on January 1, 2027.
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Samsung SDS to construct South Korea’s blockchain securities platform
As Cointelegraph reported, Samsung SDS has won a contract to construct and function a blockchain-based securities platform for South Korea’s Korea Securities Depository (KSD), with the undertaking anticipated to be accomplished by February 2027.
The transfer comes forward of South Korea’s broader push to construct market infrastructure for tokenized belongings forward of a brand new authorized framework taking impact in early 2027.
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