South Korea’s Upbit exchange has matched Binance in spot trading volume for Shiba Inu ($SHIB). According to CoinGlass’ liquidity heat maps, the daily turnover of the $SHIB/KRW pair on the South Korean platform Upbit amounted to $5.29 million, exactly the same amount recorded on Binance.
The other international platforms are trailing by a wide margin: OKX’s daily volume amounted to $2.63 million, while Bybit’s reached $1.65 million.
The local spike in activity coincided with major movements of capital within the market. On-chain monitoring recorded a large Korean player accumulating 361 billion $SHIB at a single address before making test transfers to Upbit and Korbit.
At the same time, Upbit itself conducted a series of large internal transactions, redistributing billions of $SHIB between cold and hot wallets to maintain liquidity. The foundation for this rally was the return of the famous “Kimchi Premium.”
During the first half of September, the Korean premium index remained in the +0.53% to +1.50% range, showing that domestic retail investors were willing to buy digital assets above their global average price. Due to strict currency controls and restrictions on capital movement in South Korea, international arbitrageurs cannot quickly equalize this spread.
As a result, excess buying pressure transforms not into $SHIB price equalization but into a local explosion in trading volumes.
What the charts show — and why this is a modest result for Upbit itself
This phenomenon is clearly reflected in TradingView charts comparing the weekly timeframes of the $SHIB/KRW (Upbit) and $SHIB/USDT (Binance) pairs. Despite the overall synchronicity of the long-term downtrend from the 2024 peaks, the Korean chart clearly shows anomalous spikes in vertical volume at moments of local reversals.
Current consolidation on Upbit is taking place in the zone of the historical Volume Profile, where horizontal histograms record the highest density of trading.
At the same time, the meme token’s position remains modest across the exchange as a whole. In Upbit’s overall listing, the $SHIB/KRW pair ranks only 33rd, accounting for 0.41% of the exchange’s total turnover.
The main beneficiary of local retail demand remains XRP, with a daily volume of $376.4 million, nearly one-third of all trading on the exchange, ahead of Bitcoin ($116.3 million) and Ethereum ($88.8 million).
Nevertheless, Upbit’s parity with Binance in a single asset underscores the strength of isolated Korean demand. The concentration of liquidity within the closed regulatory ecosystem of one country creates a risk of local price impulses capable of directly affecting the coin’s global chart.
