An analysis of cryptocurrencies commonly listed on South Korea’s four major won-based exchanges reveals that the proportion of assets with bid-ask spreads exceeding 1% varies by up to 83 times across platforms. Upbit stood at just 0.9%, while DigitalX (formerly Korbit) reached 76.9%. As South Korean financial authorities consider introducing a market-making system, analysts argue that simply deploying market makers will not easily resolve the liquidity gap.

Bitplanet Research Lab published these findings on the 14th in a report titled “Liquidity Structure of South Korean Crypto Exchanges and Conditions for LP Introduction.” The report compared spreads by collecting public API data at 30-second intervals—30 times over approximately 15…