"Found the second Palantir"… Stocks Korean retail investors bought aggressively [No Jeong-dong's Occasional Investor]

Korean retail investors' net purchases in September

1st Bitmine · 2nd Iris Energy

"Overwhelming net purchases of crypto stocks… even AI cloud"

Korean retail investors trying not to miss the 'second Palantir' are flocking to crypto-related stocks in the U.S. market. The Trump administration's active moves to legalize crypto, combined with these investors' tendency to aim for overwhelming returns, have driven sharp rises in these stocks.

According to the Korea Securities Depository on the 3rd, domestic investors' net purchases of U.S. stocks last month amounted to 3.1842 billion dollars (about 4.4710 trillion won), a fourfold increase (396.06%) from the previous month. In particular, in the last week of September they scooped up about 1.9660 trillion won worth, a 71.8% increase from the previous week.

Korean retail investors are concentrating purchases on crypto-related stocks. During this period, the stock they net bought the most was Bitmine Emergent Technology, with 308.5 million dollars purchased. Bitmine, originally a bitcoin mining business, surged as a digital-asset treasury (DAT) company after declaring in late June that it would accumulate Ethereum. DAT refers to companies that use cryptocurrencies or digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum as a major financial strategy. Strategy-like companies that accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic asset are representative examples.

This is interpreted as reflecting growing expectations for Ethereum after the U.S. Congress passed the 'Genius Act' to incorporate stablecoins into the institutional framework. About half of stablecoins are circulated on the Ethereum platform. Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump formally signed the Genius Act in July. Bitmine's stock, which had been hovering around 4 dollars per share before the Genius Act passed, recently jumped to the 52-dollar range.

Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and venture capitalist, recently acquired 9.1% of Bitmine's shares. Cathie Wood, head of ARK Invest, also lifted the stock by including 4.77 million shares of Bitmine across three ETFs.

Ham Hyeong-do, an analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp., explained, "Bitmine stakes the coins it holds (staking rewards) to earn 3–4% annually and reinvests them," adding, "Unlike Strategy, a Bitcoin-based DAT company, Bitmine participates in the blockchain network through staking and receives rewards."

Korean retail investors bought Iris Energy, often touted among domestic investors as the 'second Palantir', the second most. Iris Energy is a bitcoin mining company. A unique point is that it uses renewable energy to reduce power costs from bitcoin mining and the operation of data center infrastructure for mining. In particular, the data centers have diversified into AI cloud business in addition to bitcoin mining, so they encompass both the 'bitcoin' and 'AI infrastructure' themes, attracting attention from Korean retail investors.

Iris Energy's stock has risen dramatically this year. The stock, which was around 6 dollars per share in April, has nearly reached 50 dollars recently, soaring about eightfold in six months. Especially recently, the stock rose sharply, interpreted as being influenced by news in July that it purchased more than 4,000 of NVIDIA's latest GPU model, 'Blackwell'. Iris Energy is reportedly shifting its business focus from bitcoin mining to the AI cloud segment.

CoreWeave operates and leases data centers using NVIDIA's AI semiconductors./CoreWeave

The eighth and ninth most purchased stocks by Korean retail investors were CoreWeave and Circle. CoreWeave is a company that provides GPU cloud services and is noted for its business model combining crypto mining infrastructure with AI computing. CoreWeave is one of the few companies NVIDIA invested in directly ahead of OpenAI. Recently, it signed a large supply contract with Meta.

Korean retail investors also net bought 118.39 million dollars of Circle, a stablecoin issuer. Circle is the world's second-largest stablecoin provider after Tether. After its listing in June, the stock soared day after day, but crypto price weakness and a rights offering have recently stalled the stock.

Circle recently announced the launch of its own blockchain specialized for the dollar stablecoin (USDC), drawing renewed attention. This is analyzed to give it new competitiveness compared to existing stablecoin issuance platforms such as the Ethereum blockchain.

No Jeong-dong, Hankyung.com reporter (dong2@hankyung.com