South Korea's top five crypto exchanges see stablecoin balances drop 55% since July 2025.

According to CoinDesk, on-chain data shows that the stablecoin holdings of South Korea’s five major crypto exchanges—Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX—have sharply declined by approximately 55% since July 2025, dropping from around $575 million to about $188 million by mid-March. The direct trigger for this accelerated outflow was the weakening of the Korean won—by mid-March, the won fell below the 1,500-per-dollar mark, hitting its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis. According to Bradley Park, founder of DNTV Research, the won’s depreciation intensified traders’ motivation to exit dollar-denominated assets, prompting capital to be converted into won and reallocated toward domestic assets. Meanwhile, South Korea’s stock market has continued to attract capital inflows. Overall, the KOSPI index has risen 75% year-to-date in 2025 and an additional 37% this year, becoming the world’s best-performing major stock index, with gains heavily concentrated in semiconductor leaders such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The South Korean government has also introduced a “capital repatriation” account policy, offering up to 100% capital gains tax exemption for investors who sell overseas assets and reinvest domestically, further accelerating this capital reallocation. Artemis data shows that stablecoin trading volume across Asia has increased over the past year, with...