South Korean Virtual Asset Market "Reverse Kimchi Premium" Phenomenon Continues to Intensify

According to Yonhap News, the phenomenon of "reverse Kimchi premium" in South Korea's virtual asset market has continued to intensify since the beginning of this year. According to monitoring by on-chain data platform CryptoQuant, the average Bitcoin Kimchi premium index in early August was -0.48%, and the Ethereum average was -0.49%, meaning domestic prices were lower than those on overseas exchanges. Of the 221 days this year, the number of days with a reverse Bitcoin Kimchi premium reached 123, marking the first time since CryptoQuant began tracking this data in July 2020 that it exceeded the number of days with a positive premium. The record for the longest consecutive streak was also recently broken—from June 20 to July 24 this year, a reverse premium was recorded for 35 consecutive days, surpassing the previous historical record of 23 days. Analysts noted that the continued expansion of the reverse Kimchi premium mainly stems from three factors: first, the South Korean stock market has continued to strengthen, attracting a large number of investors to shift away from the crypto market; second, tighter regulations have prevented new services such as derivatives from being launched, suppressing the inflow of new funds; third, the crypto asset taxation policy is about to be implemented, further depressing investment attractiveness.