Korea’s Crypto Crash: 80% Volume Drop and ₩160T Exodus
South Korea is no longer “embracing” cryptocurrency. It is actively reallocating capital into it. By early 2025, more than 16 million South Koreans, roughly 32% of the population, held accounts on domestic crypto exchanges per a report. That figure exceeded the number of stock investors, which stood at 14.1 million by late 2024.
This shift is not speculative hype. It reflects behavior. Daily crypto trading volumes across Korean exchanges averaged ₩14.9 trillion (≈$10.2 billion) by late 2024. However, since then traffic has collapsed with trading volumes now up to 80%, with averages dropping to ₩3-6T daily amid ₩160T in outflows to overseas platforms. All this while the Korean won has become one of the most actively used fiat…
