South Korean crypto traders power the altcoin bull run – CryptoQuant report

Major crypto coins have experienced a huge surge in their prices, including Bitcoin (BTC), which has surged over 20% in the past month, nearly doubling its price this year. Other altcoins have been affected by the same movements in major currency prices. Taking the lead is memecoins like Dogecoin and other altcoins like LOOM from the Loom Network that surged ten times in just 8 weeks. 

Other currencies recorded a rise in market price, and these movements can be linked to various events around major currencies or other macroeconomic events. Among these is the awaited spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) approval for the major currencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

 Still, they take the lead, but altcoins have also rode the same wave and recorded a rally in the past 24 hours, and analysts have linked these gains to South Korean traders. 

South Korean traders influence altcoin market price activities 

The South Korean region has been noted to push an influx of investments, mostly on altcoins that has also displayed a green screen in the crypto market for the past 24 hours. Best performing crypto assets include LOOM and HIFI. The latter spiked by over 6,600% in the month of September alone. 

Regardless, Bitcoin has remained the top dog as its dominance has been felt since September and strongly confirmed in October. 

The rapid surge in the crypto alternative prices in the past 2 months can be traced to the South Korean investors who have been noted to place high-risk trades that have influenced the entire crypto market. 

Their action on price has recently caused speculative frenzies that are associated with the tokens experiencing massive gains. Upbit, a local crypto exchange’s spot trading volume, has doubled since September. 

The analysis was based on on-chain data collected from CryptoQuant, as shared on Friday. Upbit constitutes over 85% of trading volume in Korea. The firm experienced a growth of approximately 82% in October compared to the previous month. This was an increase of $27 billion, from $32.8 billion to $59.8 billion. 

This created a roller coaster effect that possibly created the rising volumes attracting market makers. Traders have taken to place their investment profits in light of continuing to take advantage of the rising market. 

Crypto market enters the weekend effect

Bradley Park, CryptoQuant analyst states that, “For coins that are only listed on Korean exchanges, if there is a significant increase in trading volume, listing futures on them has been popular on overseas exchanges. From an on-chain perspective, market makers are the buying power.”

Park also added that HIFI’s reserve on the Korean exchange Upbit rose by 27.5%. This was from 62 million tokens to 82.9 million digital tokens. As such, this attests to South Korea playing an influential role in the crypto market, standing in a pivotal position. 

Based on Upbit volume growth, the LOOM market surged by 238% in September and added another 100% at the beginning of October. However, the gains were reversed later in the month’s half. 

Additionally, major parts of the rally in decentralized borrowing and lending platform HIFI initially took place before the launch of perpetual futures tied to the token by Binance. This was in mid-September, and after the launch, the token market price turned lower. 

Amid all this frenzy, Bitcoin has remained at the top while the altcoin activity has surged in the South Korean crypto exchanges. Considering the ratio of Bitcoin’s capitalization and its comparison to the rest of the world, it rose from 49% to 53%.