The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) conducted a survey on 21 registered virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to assess the current state of the domestic virtual asset market and keep relevant statistics up to date.
Survey Overview
(Respondents) 21 VASPs (14 exchange service providers and 7 wallet and custodian service providers)
(Survey Method) Data collected from VASPs
(Period Covered) January 1, 2024 to June 30, 2024
Key Survey Findings for H1 2024
The domestic market for virtual assets in H1 2024 continues to show an upward trend from H2 2023 with average daily trading volume (up 67%), market capitalization (up 27%), total amount of deposits (up 3%), and number of users eligible to trade (up 21%) all increasing from previous six months. Total operating profits (up 106%) of VASPs also went up significantly.
When compared with the survey results of H2 2023, the number of virtual assets listed on exchanges declined due to increased number of coin-only exchange service providers closing down their business operations. The number of new listings by the KRW-based exchange service providers remained the same as previous six months (155), while the number of delistings went up slightly (up 7%). The number of exclusively listed virtual assets—those tradable via single VASP in the domestic market—dropped considerably (down 14%).
Maximum drawdown (price volatility) of virtual assets increased 8 percentage points from the previous six-month period to 70 percent. External transfer of virtual assets by exchange service providers also increased considerably (up KRW36.7 trillion, or 96%). Among them, those transferred to registered entities under the travel rule declined slightly (down 2%p), while those transferred to whitelisted overseas entities and digital wallets rose somewhat (up 1%p).
The number of employees hired by VASPs rose 6 percent for KRW-based exchange service providers but fell 51 percent for coin-only exchange service providers due to a higher rate of business closedown, which led to a 5 percent decline in the total number of employees hired by VASPs. In addition, the average number of anti-money laundering (AML) specialists hired by VASPs declined for KRW-based exchange service providers (down 3) but rose somewhat for coin-only exchange service providers (up 0.4).
* Please refer to the attached PDF for details.