The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) conducted a survey on 35 registered virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to see the current state of the domestic virtual asset market and keep relevant statistics up to date.
Survey Overview
(Respondents) 35 VASPs (26 exchange service providers and 9 other businesses)
(Survey Method) Data collected from VASPs
(Period Covered) January 1, 2023 to June 30, 2023
Key Survey Findings for H1 2023
The domestic market for virtual assets in H1 2023 saw increases in terms of market capitalization, deposit (in KRW) and the exchange service providers’ operating profits as virtual asset prices rose and investment sentiment recovered. Among 21 coin-only exchange service providers, continuing business operation appears to be difficult for 10 of them as they showed no record of sales from transaction fees. The market capitalization at the end of June 2023 stood at KRW28.4 trillion, up 46 percent from KRW19.4 trillion at the end of 2022. In the same period, the amount of deposits (in KRW) also increased to KRW4.0 trillion, up 11 percent from KRW3.6 trillion at the end of 2022. The operating profits of VASPs amounted to KRW227.3 billion in the first half of 2023, up 82 percent from KRW124.9 billion during the previous six months.
According to the survey, the frequency of new coin listings and trading suspensions (due to delisting) also increased. There were 169 new virtual asset listings in the first half of 2023, up 128 percent from 74 new listings in the previous six months. The number of delisted coins also rose during the same period from 78 in H2 2022 to 115 in H1 2023. There were 622 different types of virtual assets being circulated in the domestic market in H1 2023 and 366 of them were virtual assets listed exclusively by single exchange service providers.
Despite a recovery seen in the virtual asset market, the volume of domestic virtual asset transactions and the number of users declined somewhat. Between H2 2022 and H1 2023, the number of users who own less than KRW1 million in virtual assets, who make up the vast majority of users (4.43 million users or 73 percent), also declined 7 percent. The average daily trading volume in H1 2023 stood at KRW2.9 trillion, down 1.3 percent form KRW2.94 trillion in H2 2022. The total number of users eligible to trade also dropped 3 percent, from 6.27 million to 6.06 million users in the same period.
* Please refer to the attached file for details.