"From Coins to Stocks"... Active Domestic Virtual Asset Users Plunge Below 20%

Active User Rate at Top 5 Exchanges Drops to 19.5%
Halved in Just a Year and a Half

Eight out of ten investors using domestic virtual asset exchanges have stopped trading. In addition to the downturn in the virtual asset market, increased volatility in both domestic and international stock markets has sharply diminished the appeal of investing in the coin market.

Bitcoin once fell to around $72,000, marking its lowest level in 15 months, as shown on the Bitcoin price display on the LED board at the Upbit Customer Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul on February 5, 2026. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung

According to data submitted by Assemblyman Lee Jongwook of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee, based on Financial Supervisory Service documents, the percentage of active users at the five major domestic virtual asset exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, GOPAX) stood at 19.5% as of the end of June this year.

This means that out of all users who completed Know Your Customer (KYC) verification and are eligible to trade (11,155,038 people), only 2,169,780 individuals actually made at least one transaction—through trading, exchange, or staking (deposit)—within the month. The rate of active users, which had reached 35.7% at the end of January last year, has essentially halved in just a year and a half. The number of eligible users also dropped by more than 400,000 over three months, falling from a record high of 11.56 million at the end of March this year, indicating that inflows of new investors have completely dried up.

This market cooling is also clearly evident in the statistics on outflows of investment capital. The total value of virtual assets held by domestic investors plunged by 54.7%, dropping from 125.7533 trillion won at the end of January last year to 56.9606 trillion won at the end of June this year. During the same period, exchange deposits also plummeted from 10.6561 trillion won to 5.22 trillion won. The blow dealt to the domestic market by the global virtual asset market capitalization shrinking to half its previous size (from $4.28 trillion to $2.18 trillion) has been direct and significant.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.