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By Anna J. Park
Nearly 100,000 local coin investors turned out to have over 100 million won ($78,247) in cryptocurrencies, accounting for about 1.7 percent of all local coin investors.
According to data compiled by the Financial Services Commission (FSC), Thursday, the total number of users registered at local cryptocurrency exchanges stood at 5.58 million as of the end of last year. Only 1.7 percent of them, or about 94,000 people, hold over 100 million won worth of digital assets at the cryptocurrency exchanges, while about 4,000 people hold over 10 billion won.
Over 730,000 people, or some 13 percent of all local coin investors, hold coins worth between 10 million won and 100 million won, while 2.76 million people, or 49 percent, have below one million won in their coin exchange accounts. Also, 1.63 million people, or 29 percent of all coin investors in Korea, have digital assets between one million won and below 10 million won.
By gender, 67 percent of the investors, or 3.74 million, are male, far exceeding the proportion of females in the ownership of digital assets.
In terms of age, 54 percent of the local coin investors are in their 30s and 40s, totaling 1.74 million and 1.48 million, respectively, while 24 percent are in their 20s or below.
What is particularly noteworthy is that major coins ― such as bitcoin and ethereum ― only account for about 27 percent of transactions conducted in won-denominated market transactions and 9 percent of coin-based market transactions. This figure is a huge difference from the global average in which the key digital currencies take up about 59 percent of transactions.
As over 600 different kinds of coins are listed and traded on local cryptocurrency exchanges, the FSC plans to strengthen monitoring and regulation of the exchanges to protect local coin investors.
