PANews reported on March 30 that according to South Korean media SBS, as of the end of February this year, the total number of users of South Korean virtual asset exchanges has exceeded 16 million, reaching 16.29 million, accounting for about 32% of the country's total population (about 51.68 million people). With last year's US presidential election as a turning point, the number of new investors has steadily increased by hundreds of thousands each month, and has now exceeded the number of stock investors (about 14.1 million). This data is the sum of account holders of South Korea's five major exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax. If the same person opens an account in multiple exchanges, it will be counted repeatedly.
As the number of investors continues to increase by hundreds of thousands, some market participants predict that the number of investors will soon reach 20 million. As of the end of February this year, the number of account investors on Upbit, South Korea's largest exchange, was 9.82 million. As of the end of March, this number is expected to be close to 10 million. After Upbit, the largest number of users are Coinone (3.2 million), Bithumb (2.36 million), Korbit (770,000), and Gopax (150,000). In the past year, the number of Bithumb users has increased from 1.33 million to 2.36 million, an increase of 77.4%, a growth rate far exceeding Gopax (52.4%), Korbit (10.9%), Upbit (14.2%), Coinone (8.6%), etc.
