Cryptocurrency market detailed by the KoFIU for the first time

Upbit office in Gangnam, southern Seoul [NEWS1]

The capitalization of cryptocurrencies traded on Korea's crypto exchanges was 55.2 trillion won ($46 billion) as of Dec. 31 last year, higher than the market caps of most listed companies.

Registered users of cryptocurrency exchanges totaled 15.25 million, with some double counting as many users had more than one account. Around 4,000 people had cryptocurrency holdings worth more than 1 billion won, according data on cryptocurrency business operators released by the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU).

It is the first release of such data.

The unit under the Financial Services Commission was established to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing.

The research was conducted on 24 cryptocurrency exchanges, including the four major exchanges — Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit — where Korean won-crypto trading is available. On the rest of the exchanges, only cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency trading is allowed.

The number of users on the four major crypto exchanges totaled 13.4 million, and 5.58 million completed user authentications, a necessary step before trading.

A total of 1.74 million users were in their 30s, 1.48 million in their 40s and 1.34 million in their 20s.

According to the KoFIU report, 49 percent of crypto investors had 1 million won or less in their accounts, 29 percent had between 1 million won and 10 million won and 0.1 percent had more than 1 billion won worth of crypto or deposits in their accounts.

The average daily transaction amount was 11.3 trillion won, though that has fallen to around 4 trillion won this year.

As of late last year, 1,257 cryptocurrencies were listed on domestic exchanges, 623 cryptocurrencies if double counting is considered.

The number of crypto coins that got delisted in the second half of last year totaled 329, compared to 153 that were newly listed.

Cryptocurrency exchanges raked in 3.37 trillion-won of operating profit in 2021, though 99.3 percent of it was generated by the four major exchanges. The exchanges make money by collecting an average 0.17 percent in trading fees, more than 60 times the 0.0027 percent fees for stock traded on the Korea Exchange.

"This was meaningful in that it was the first research conducted on the domestic crypto asset market," said a spokesperson for the KoFIU. "We will continue to collect data on the crypto asset market through regular research on a biannual basis."

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]