PANews reported on December 28 that according to Wall Street News, Asian stock markets have experienced mixed performances this year against the backdrop of a strong dollar. Some have achieved a bull market in stocks denominated in their own currencies at the expense of exchange rate depreciation, while others have sacrificed some of their stock market gains at the expense of relatively stable exchange rates. South Korea is the only exception. In terms of won, the South Korean Composite Index KSOPI has fallen 10.0% this year. After considering the fall in the won, the KSOPI denominated in US dollars has fallen 18.9%, both of which are the weakest in Asia. From the perspective of capital flows, since the second half of this year, only institutions in South Korea have maintained a net purchase scale of the stock market, while the household sector has been continuously reducing purchases.
Analysts believe that the money that Korean residents have taken out of the stock market has been used to "speculate in cryptocurrencies" to a large extent. Data from the Bank of Korea (BOK) shows that as of November, the number of cryptocurrency investors in South Korea has reached 15.59 million, an increase of 610,000 from the previous month. Currently, 30% of the 51 million South Korean citizens are speculating in cryptocurrencies. The average daily trading volume of South Korea's five major cryptocurrency exchanges-UPbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX-jumped from 3.4 trillion won in October to 14.9 trillion won in November, an increase of more than four times. Koreans have always been keen on investing in cryptocurrencies. In the first bull market of cryptocurrencies in 2017, about 5% of the population participated; in the second bull market in 2021, 10% of the population participated; now this proportion has expanded to 30%. But historically, the Korean stock index has been positively correlated with the price of Bitcoin as a whole, until October this year, when this positive correlation was completely broken.
