Company
Upbit is South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, operated by Dunamu, offering trading in digital assets like Bitcoin and stablecoins.
XRP drew $145.6 million in won trading on Upbit on Oct. 15, ahead of Bitcoin at $126.5 million and Ethereum at $92.1 million. Crypto Briefing and Bitcoin News tie the lead to South Korea's block on 27 offshore exchanges, but the evidence for a retail rush into one altcoin is thin.
Reality
XRP whales deposited 1.669 billion tokens on Binance over 30 days, the highest reading in seven months, according to CryptoQuant data. At $1.33 a token that is about $2.22 billion, against $1.8 billion of net US spot ETF inflows over 13 weeks.
Reality
South Korea's FIU is blocking the websites of 27 unregistered offshore crypto exchanges, on top of earlier payment and app-store limits. Platforms serving Korean users without registration lose web access too, and Crypto Briefing counts only 27 to 28 registered domestic platforms.
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South Korea's tax service expects to publish crypto guidance in November, before a 22% tax on gains above 2.5 million won starts on January 1, 2027. Staking, airdrops, hard forks and DeFi are still under review, so exchanges are building against rules not yet written.
Reality
Bitcoin climbed back to about $82,500 after Trump said the U.S. would not attack Iran before the Nov. 3 midterms, still about 4% down on the week. Futures open interest barely moved on the way up, so traders bought the bounce without taking on fresh leverage.
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Naver Financial and Dunamu pushed their share swap to March 31, 2027, a third three-month delay that leaves the close 274 days past its first target. The companies say Korea's antitrust and financial-sector reviews now decide the date.
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Meritz Securities signed a Ripple custody study on Oct. 1 while weighing five digital-asset lines, spot crypto ETFs among them. With no product or launch date attached, any payoff waits on what Korea's coming rules let brokers sell.
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Blast is closing its Ethereum layer-2 after the chain earned $1,793 last month, down from about $3.5 million in June 2024. Revenue fell far faster than deposits, a pattern that fits an airdrop-era chain better than an industry-wide squeeze.
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South Korea's five big crypto exchanges traded about 20.5 trillion won in the week to Oct. 2, down 19.56% from the week before. At about 2.9 trillion won a day, the week ran at the first-half average regulators reported on Oct. 1, so trading is back at the year's pace after one busier week.
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XRP Asia, backed by Ripple and the XRP Ledger Foundation, launched in Singapore on Oct. 3 to connect Asia-Pacific XRPL builders with grants and partners. The grants it points to are Ripple's older programs, and the best documented of them offered up to $200,000 per Japanese project starting in June 2025.
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MoonPay is pursuing stablecoin, remittance and payments work with KB Financial, Woori Bank and KakaoBank after opening a Korean entity in September. Its one-vendor pitch faces three other global entrants and four Korean firms, most of them selling banks a single layer of the stack.
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Scammers ran a working copy of Dunamu's unlaunched GIWA network on its reserved chain ID 9134 and drained 766.25 ETH from users. The ID got through an exchange's listing checks, so a matching network ID is now weak evidence that a chain is the real one.
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Upbit's parent gets Visa's network and a shortlist that includes an unlaunched consortium dollar coin. There is no launch date yet, because Seoul's draft law may reserve won-stablecoin issuance for bank-controlled groups.
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Lee Hyoung-il told the National Assembly that virtual assets belong in the other-income category and that the National Tax Service will publish the operative rules by the end of this year, while capital gains taxation of securities waits for calmer markets.
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A petition for a two-year delay reached the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee with 51,004 names, and the finance minister nominee has told the committee that starting the 22% levy in January 2027 is desirable.
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Doubling the worker pool against Nansen's API bought 5.8 seconds of median wall clock across four tokens and cost three calls in 441. Holder Atlas's defaults are back at 4-wide under 5 requests per second.
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Global turnover in Japan's yen stablecoin ran $64,571 the day before Upbit listed it and $32.49 million three days later. Korea's own stablecoin law is still stalled, so the token trades there as ordinary crypto.
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Both Korean venues flagged BONK on July 7 under the same DAXA listing code. Bithumb lifted the flag on August 7, Upbit stops trading on September 7, and the gap between them is discretion the code deliberately leaves in place.
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Korea's four biggest venues lost $364m in the first half, and the rebound since is landing unevenly, with Upbit's $1.04bn day beating Bithumb, Coinone and Digital X combined while it has waived fees only on stablecoins.
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Lookonchain says the mint equals 16.7% of SAND's cap. Two Korean exchanges froze transfers, the issuer has said nothing, and the quote is still up.
Reality
Invest · August 15, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers