South Korea crypto holdings halve in a one year as investors flip to inventory market

The cost of cryptocurrency held by South Korean investors more than halved staunch thru the final one year, falling to 60.6 trillion won ($41.4 billion) by the end of February 2026 from 121.8 trillion won ($83.3 billion) on the end of January 2025.

Day-to-day procuring and selling volumes across the country’s five essential exchanges furthermore fell to $3 billion by the end of February from $11.6 billion on the end of December 2024, Korean outlet The Chosun Day-to-day reported, citing records the Monetary institution of Korea submitted to Accumulate. Cha Gyu-geun of the Rebuilding Korea Occasion.

Obtained deposits held at exchanges, a proxy for investor dry powder, furthermore fell to 7.8 trillion won from 10.7 trillion won on the end of 2024. The tumble is attributed to a aggregate of falling crypto prices and capital flowing into the inventory market.

Stablecoins bucked the broader model. Holdings climbed from $60 million on the end of July 2024 to a height of $597 million on the end of December 2025. They eased to about $415 million by the end of February 2026, a miles smaller decline than the broader crypto market.

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Tighter AML principles threaten to push investors away

The market contraction comes as regulators put collectively to tighten oversight. Monetary authorities thought to place into effect revised AML principles in August that could well maybe well require crypto transactions above 10 million won involving in one other country exchanges or private wallets to be automatically flagged as suspicious.

High Korean exchanges by quantity. Source: CoinGecko

Alternate body DAXA has pushed wait on, arguing the rule of thumb is disproportionate and can drive customers to offshore platforms like Binance. The industry body said the proposal could well maybe enlarge suspicious transaction experiences from South Korea’s five largest exchanges by 85 times, to over 5.4 million from about 63,000 conditions final one year, making compliance complex in put collectively.

Debate over the federal government’s deliberate 22% crypto tax, build for 2027, is furthermore intensifying. On Thursday, South Korea’s Finance Ministry confirmed for potentially the most critical time that a 22% tax on crypto beneficial properties will take attain as scheduled on Jan. 1, 2027.

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Samsung SDS to possess South Korea’s blockchain securities platform

As Cointelegraph reported, Samsung SDS has won a contract to possess and operate a blockchain-based totally mostly securities platform for South Korea’s Korea Securities Depository (KSD), with the project anticipated to be done by February 2027.

The pass comes sooner than South Korea’s broader push to possess market infrastructure for tokenized resources sooner than a up to date factual framework taking attain in early 2027.

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