South Korean digital-asset investors are estimated to have paid 4.77 trillion won ($3.31 billion) in trading fees to major overseas cryptocurrency exchanges this year, nearly 2.7 times the combined operating revenue of the country’s five largest domestic exchanges last year. According to data released Sunday by Tiger Research and Kaiko, Korean investors paid more than 1 trillion won in fees to Binance and Bybit this year alone. Other major overseas platforms, including OKX (580 billion won), Bitget (266.3 billion won) and Huobi (74.4 billion won), also generated substantial revenue from Korean users.
From January through September, Koreans purchased 124 trillion won worth of digital assets on foreign exchanges. For the full year, that figure is expected to reach 160 trillion won, according to Tiger Research—more than triple the 45.5 trillion won recorded in 2023.
The analysis combines estimates of Korean investors’ market share on global exchanges with data on asset outflows from wallets held at domestic exchanges, adjusted for derivatives trading patterns. Binance also operates Binance Alpha, which allows trading of tokens before formal listing, offering access to high-risk investments with risk disclosures—services unavailable on Korean exchanges. Perpetual futures—products unique to digital-asset markets—are already standard overseas, and platforms such as Binance and Bybit allow leveraged positions worth tens of times an investor’s assets.
The scale of fees reflects a sharp increase in the number of Korean investors using overseas platforms. The liquidity and trading demand created by Korean investors have, paradoxically, fueled the growth of overseas platforms for years, it said.
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