Active Users at South Korean Crypto Exchanges Fall Below 20% as Investment Fever Cools

The share of users actively trading on South Korea’s major cryptocurrency exchanges has fallen below 20%, underscoring a sharp cooling in investor activity. A prolonged market slump has curbed both new investor inflows and trading.

Data submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service and analyzed by Lee Jong-wook, a lawmaker on the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee, showed the active-user ratio at the country’s five largest exchanges stood at 19.5% at the end of June, Busan Ilbo reported on August 3. The exchanges were Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax.

That means fewer than one in five users eligible to trade after completing know-your-customer checks bought, sold, swapped or staked assets even once during June.

The active-user ratio has fallen steadily from 35.7% at the end of January 2025. It dropped to 19.5% at the end of March 2026 and 19.2% at the end of April, and has since remained around 20%.

New user inflows also slowed. The number of KYC-verified users eligible to trade reached a record 11,563,661 at the end of March, then fell to 11,153,038 by the end of June. That was a decline of more than 400,000 in four months.

South Korean investors’ crypto holdings also shrank 54.7%, to 56.9606 trillion won ($41.3 billion), at the end of June from 125.7533 trillion won ($91.1 billion) at the end of January 2025. Exchange deposits fell to 5.2200 trillion won ($3.8 billion) from 10.6561 trillion won ($7.7 billion) over the same period.

The industry says cryptocurrencies, which had attracted investors with their high volatility, have lost appeal relative to domestic and overseas stock markets, including shares such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.