Bitcoin soars to new record on 'Santa rally'
A screen shows bitcoin trading at around 150 million won at local crypto exchange Bithumb's headquarters in southern Seoul on Monday. (Yonhap)
Riding a “Santa Claus rally,” a hike in markets seen at the tail end of the year, the price of cryptocurrency bitcoin reached another historic milestone on local exchanges Monday, surpassing the 150 million won ($104,493) mark for the first time.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, topped its previous all-time high and soared to a new peak of 152 million won on Upbit, the largest exchange in Korea, on Monday. The price had retreated slightly to 151 million won as of 5 p.m. A similar price movement was seen on the country’s second-largest crypto exchange Bithumb.
The surge comes less than 50 days after the cryptocurrency surpassed the 100 million won mark on Oct. 29. The digital currency has been on a global rally, reaching as high as $106,500 on the Coinbase exchange after US President-elect Donald Trump firmly embraced bitcoin, suggesting he plans to create a bitcoin strategic reserve.
The strong gains in the bitcoin price here follow intense volatility earlier this month. Bitcoin plunged from 130 million won to 88 million won on local exchanges when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, as investors pressured by heightened political volatility went on a selling spree.
With the dip, the "kimchi premium" for bitcoin, referring to the higher prices of cryptocurrencies in Korea compared to international markets due to the country's closed trading environment, inverted to around minus 30 percent, but the price soon recovered.
Though there were projections that the prices of major cryptocurrencies could sharply rise in Korea and strengthen the kimchi premium after the National Assembly passed the motion to impeach Yoon on Saturday, prices have been on a similar track in and out of Korea.
"As the impeachment had been expected by the market, its impact on bitcoin had already been priced in. The price, instead, has been moving in accordance with global trading," an official from a local exchange said.
Other alternative “kimchi coins,” such as Kaia, formed through the merger of platforms launched by Korean tech giants Line and Kakao, and Bora, affiliated with Kakao Games, experienced a price surge following the National Assembly's decision. The coins briefly gained over 10 percent, but quickly lost steam in the following days.
“Alternative coins could display sharper fluctuations because the transaction volume is much lower,” the official said.
While a total of 1.19 trillion won worth of bitcoin was traded on Upbit and Bithumb in the past 24 hours as of 5 p.m. Monday, the transaction volume of Kaia stood at 32 billion won. The combined 24-hour trading volume for Bora amounted to around 450 billion won.
