Retail trading volumes for crypto assets in South Korea jumped to $18 billion over the past 24 hours, outperforming the country’s broader stock market by 22%, according to a new report from 10x Research.
In a Dec. 2 research report, 10x Research founder Markus Thielen said retail cryptocurrency trading volumes reached their second-highest level of the year on Dec. 2, traders south -Koreans being frenzied around a series of “strong momentum” altcoins.
According to the report, Ripple’s XRP token ($2.69 XRP) saw volume of over $6.3 billion that day in South Korea. Dogecoin (DOGE $0.4258) came second with $1.6 billion, followed by Stellar (XLM $0.5428) at $1.3 billion, Ethereum Name Service (ENS $41.58) at 900 million. of dollars and Hedera (HBAR $0.3481) at $800 million.
These high-momentum cryptocurrencies are primarily driven by retail traders, capitalizing on and strengthening momentum-driven trends.
XRP, ENS, and HBAR – which belong to a category of older tokens commonly referred to as “dinosaur coins” by crypto natives – have all outperformed the rest of the crypto market, each gaining 90%, 73% respectively. % and 168% last week.
Additionally, Thielen noted that Bitcoin’s funding rate – an indicator of criminal activity – was “relatively moderate” at just 15% on an annualized basis.
Bitcoin’s funding rate sits at a “light” 15% while interest in altcoins is skyrocketing. Source: 10x Research
Combined with the recent increase in trading activity for altcoins, Thielen said this is a surefire sign that an “altseason” is already well underway.
“We see one of the largest discrepancies on record between a relatively moderate Bitcoin funding rate, at 15% annualized, while retail trading volumes in Korea have increased to $18 billion.”
“The action is clearly in the altcoin market and everyone needs to have a strategy to catch these waves while remaining disciplined,” he added.
Ripple’s XRP has seen a historic rally over the past month, rising from a price of $0.50 to a new yearly high of $2.80 on December 2, according to TradingView data.
XRP is up over 436% over the past month. Source: TradingView
The surprising rise saw the token eclipse both Solana SOL $229.72 and Tether USDT $1.00 in terms of market capitalization, making it the third largest crypto asset by total value at press time .
