In-depth analysis of the Korean crypto market: Upbit’s spot trading volume ranks second in the world; CEX has more than 6 million active users

Original Title: DI - 03: Korean Crypto Community

Original Source: DeSpread

1. Introduction

1.1. Importance of Community

The community of a cryptocurrency project is not just a collection of users and investors, but one of the key factors that determine the success or failure of a project. The importance of the community cannot be overemphasized, because blockchain technology and projects based on this technology are all centered around decentralized governance.

Decentralized governance includes the team and the community jointly deciding the future of the project, including decisions such as token economy, roadmap, and development priorities. If a team ignores the community and operates a project opaquely, it will cause suspicion and uncertainty in the community, thereby spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and shaking the value foundation of the entire project.

Luna founder Do Kwon often ignores many questions raised by the Luna community about the LUNA-UST mechanism, and even stated on Twitter that he does not debate with beggars. Not only that, he continued to ignore the question of "How to prepare the equivalent of $300 million in Anchor Protocol interest?", indicating that it was a "question without answering value", but instead caused the community to fear that Luna would go bankrupt. Looking back, ignoring community feedback is very costly.

Community participation and feedback play an important role in the development of the project and meeting market needs and expectations. Therefore, when the project team actively participates in community communication, it can effectively improve the transparency and credibility of the project. Community members are also the most effective propagandists who can help spread the value and promise of the project and make great contributions to the growth of the project's user base. The reason why all new projects recently use community airdrops as rewards is also based on understanding the importance of community participation and in order to quickly attract community participation.

1.2. Focus on the Korean market

As time goes by, South Korea's status and attention in the cryptocurrency industry continue to increase. For the mention of "South Korea" (excluding North Korea) in the headlines of major international media The analysis of confirms that the global interest in the Korean cryptocurrency market is growing. The peak in the second half of 2017 in the chart is mainly about Luna and Do Kwon articles, but starting from the second half of 2023, we see more articles about government regulation or the Korean market, indicating that the trends and policies of the Korean market are becoming one of the focuses of global attention.

In addition, as we introduced in our previous report (DI-01: Korean Centralized Exchanges), Korean exchanges rank high in terms of trading volume worldwide. As shown in the figure above, Upbit ranks as the second largest spot market in the world in 2023, second only to Binance.

Korean exchanges tend to trade altcoins that are not mainstream (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum), and for altcoins with relatively large market capitalization, Korean exchanges also have a great influence. For example, Bitcoin L2 project Stacks (STX) accounted for 90% of global trading volume in Korea on August 5, 2023, and Ethereum's largest NFT market project token BLUR accounted for 60% of global trading volume in Korea on January 4, 2023. These data show the importance of the Korean market and its influence on the global market.

Identifying community trends in a particular market is essential to understanding the characteristics of that market. This report aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of the Korean cryptocurrency community from this perspective. This report mainly focuses on understanding the communities in the Korean cryptocurrency market in 2023, the topics in their communities, and the correlation between community interests and market trends.

2. Korean Cryptocurrency Community Platforms

2.1. Telegram

Telegram is an international messaging service with approximately 800 million monthly active users (MAU) worldwide, and is also the most active community platform in Korea that uses on-chain products. Telegram offers a variety of features, including large group chats, notification messages, and robots, so many communities operate on Telegram beyond just messaging between individuals.

There are channels on Telegram for various topics, including airdrop information, exchange announcements, DeFi news, trading signals, research, etc. According to our statistics, there are currently at least 500 cryptocurrency-related channels in South Korea.

Projects usually have their own official Telegram channels and chat rooms, through which users can quickly receive the latest information about the project and interact with other community members. Telegram also supports multiple languages, so it is easy to communicate with the global community, and it is also very convenient to forward and quote information between channels, which is an effective way to exchange information.

2.2. KakaoTalk Open Chat Room

KakaoTalk is the most widely used messaging app in South Korea, with 48 million MAUs at the end of 2023, making it the top app in South Korea. With a population of 51.32 million, it can be said that all South Koreans use KakaoTalk. Since KakaoTalk is suitable for users of all ages, the cryptocurrency community also uses KakaoTalk's open chat rooms for communication. Open chat rooms are one of KakaoTalk's services, and users with similar interests can create chat rooms.

Open chat rooms related to cryptocurrencies are mainly composed of general cryptocurrency investors and holders, most of whom invest in coins listed on Korean centralized exchanges. In general, cryptocurrency chat rooms on Kakao tend to focus on price quotes and market analysis. Compared with Telegram, these cryptocurrency communities have higher accessibility and more diverse participants, but the difference is that these participants are less adept at using on-chain services.

In addition, KakaoTalk's open chat rooms can only accommodate up to 1,500 people, and there are few functions such as message forwarding, so it is difficult to share information between chat rooms. Not only that, Kakao's bots have limited functions, and it is impossible to create sub-channels in chat rooms. In addition, KakaoTalk has fewer international users and is a fairly localized community platform.

Due to the above reasons, KakaoTalk still has many shortcomings in terms of community management. In terms of these technical limitations and user characteristics, the overall impression of the cryptocurrency community on KakaoTalk in terms of information quality and professionalism is slightly insufficient.

2.3. Coinpan

Coinpan is one of the largest cryptocurrency community websites in South Korea, with a MAU of 5.3 million by the end of 2023, according to Simillerweb. This figure exceeds the MAU of Bithumb, the second largest exchange in South Korea by trading volume (Bithumb's MAU was approximately 4.7 million as of December 23). On March 27, 2023, the Coinpan Free Forum had 8,636 posts per day, making it one of the most active communities in South Korea.

The main types of posts on Coinpan include profit and loss, news, and investment arguments, with most discussions focusing on currencies listed on centralized exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb, and promoting investment in specific currencies. On the profit and loss forum, many users will certify the profitability of their investments by sharing screenshots of exchanges, and there will also be users sharing contract profit claims on overseas exchanges.

On Coinpan, users can check cryptocurrency prices on various exchanges, including Bithumb, Upbit, Coinone, Coinbit, Korbit, and Binance, and find information about Korean premiums and trading volumes. However, some message boards and specific features require logging in or reaching a certain level of community participation to unlock, creating a threshold for general user participation.

2.4. DCInside

DCInside is one of the most popular online community websites in South Korea, often referred to as the Korean Reddit, and is loved by everyone for its anonymity and free discussion culture. DCInside organizes message boards called "Gallery" according to various topics, and users can choose to hang out in the appropriate Gallery according to their interests.

There are several cryptocurrency-related Galleries on DCInside, and some of the more representative ones are Bitcoin Gallery, Altcoin Gallery, NFT Gallery, and Cryptocurrency Gallery. These galleries focus on information sharing and investment discussions for currencies listed on centralized exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb, and there is no discussion of on-chain activities.

These communities are usually highly speculative, dominated by subjective opinions and short-term profit-seeking investments, and most of the information is non-objective. There is relatively little discussion about the long-term value of on-chain technology or projects, and all the focus is on the short-term gains brought by the rise and fall of specific currencies.

Due to these characteristics, although the cryptocurrency galleries on DCInside are slightly lacking in professionalism and information quality, if you want to understand the interests and investment behaviors of Korean cryptocurrency investors, the platform can be a useful window.

2.5. X (Twitter)

X (formerly Twitter) is already one of the most used platforms in the global cryptocurrency community, and the main communication channel for all relevant people in the industry is to communicate and share information through Twitter.

However, the activity of the Korean cryptocurrency community on Twitter is slightly lower than the global level. The data also shows (as shown in the lower half of this article) that the number of cryptocurrency-related Twitter users and tweets in South Korea is significantly lower than in Japan (possibly because Twitter as a platform is not popular in South Korea).

Despite the lower data, South Korean cryptocurrency Twitter users have a wide range of interests, including experts in specific projects, technical analysts, senior investors, speculators, meme enthusiasts, and DeFi and NFT experts. In particular, fundamental and research-based investors are the most active on the platform.

In South Korea, Twitter also lags behind Telegram in terms of timeliness. In the Korean cryptocurrency community, news on Telegram spreads the fastest and the discussions are the most heated. In comparison, the speed of information dissemination on Twitter is relatively slow. However, compared with other communities, Twitter is characterized by having more active users on the chain.

2.6. Discord

Discord was originally a communication platform for gamers, but it has also been widely used by the cryptocurrency community in recent years. The main feature of Discord is the server-based community organization. Each project or organization can create its own server, and users can join the server they are interested in to communicate with the community.

In the field of cryptocurrency, Discord is mainly used to build communities for specific projects. Many projects run their own Discord servers to share information such as project updates, development progress, airdrops, governance voting, etc., and promote communication and discussion among community members.

However, since Discord is very focused on a single project, there are relatively few discussions about general investment information or market trends. Another reason is that Discord's structure makes it difficult to share information between different servers because each server runs independently.

Discord offers a variety of features such as voice chat, screen sharing, role assignment, and bot integration, making it a tool for community management, especially among developers, who receive code update notifications and discuss technical issues through integration with GitHub.

Compared to the global level, Discord's usage rate in South Korea is low because Discord is still an unfamiliar platform for Korean users, and the language barrier raises the threshold for general users to participate in the global community. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the widespread use of Telegram and KakaoTalk in South Korea is also one of the reasons for the low usage of Discord.

2.7. Naver Cafe

Naver is the largest website in South Korea and provides a community service called Naver Cafe. Naver Cafe is one of the most popular and longest-running community platforms in South Korea, and the cryptocurrency community also uses the platform. The cryptocurrency community on Naver Cafe tends to focus on price chart analysis and investment information sharing, especially for currencies listed on Korean centralized exchanges, especially altcoins, reflecting that Korean investors tend to pursue short-term profits and are interested in highly volatile altcoins rather than the basics of cryptocurrency.

While Naver Cafe has the advantage of being an easily accessible and most familiar platform to users, it is slightly lacking in terms of expertise and information reliability. Although we can find many successful investment stories and recommendations on Naver Cafe, most of them are speculative in nature and lack objective evidence. In addition, Naver Cafe has many limitations due to its lack of connection with the global community. Most conversations in Naver Cafe are conducted in Korean, and there are relatively few discussions about overseas projects or global trends. However, in recent years, due to the growing interest of users in DeFi, NFT, and on-chain activities such as airdrops and liquidity staking, the number of Naver Cafe activities related to this has also increased.

So far, we have introduced the main characteristics of the Korean cryptocurrency community formed on various platforms, each of which has its own unique characteristics in terms of the number of users, interests, and discussion culture. In the second half, we will use this as a background and dig deeper into the data to see what the hot topics in the Korean cryptocurrency community in 2023 are and what impact they have on the market.

3. 2023 Korean Community Trends

3.1. Google Trend

Google Trend is a service provided by Google, the world's largest search engine, which provides the frequency of searches for specific search terms in a specific time and region. The search volume of Google Trend is expressed in relative interest, with 100 representing the highest search volume during the period. Using Google Trends for keyword analysis, you can observe which topics Korean investors and users are interested in and compare them with other countries.

3.1.1. Comparison of stocks and cryptocurrencies

· South Korea loves cryptocurrencies

Stocks and cryptocurrencies are the two most common investment methods in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. When comparing the search volume of stocks and cryptocurrencies, it can be found that South Korea's interest in cryptocurrencies is higher than other countries. In the United States, the search volume for stocks (Stock) is about 20 times that of cryptocurrencies (Crypto), in Japan, the search volume for stocks (株式) is about 7 times that of cryptocurrencies (コイン), and only in South Korea is the search volume for cryptocurrencies (코인) about 25% more than stocks.

This difference can also be observed in the actual number of investors. As of 2022, the number of stock investors who hold at least one share of stock in South Korea is about 14.41 million (28% of the total population), while the number of cryptocurrency investors with exchange accounts in the same year is about 6.27 million (12% of the total population), showing a significantly higher proportion. In contrast, the number of registered accounts on centralized exchanges recorded in Japan in December 2022 was about 6.3 million, which is only 5% of the Japanese population.

· Comparison between South Korea and Japan

Japan’s interest in cryptocurrencies is lower than that in stocks, which can also be observed in terms of trading volume. Comparing the trading volume of the top five Japanese exchanges and the Korean exchange Upbit in May last year, a huge difference can be seen. The top five Japanese exchanges had a combined trading volume of $4 billion, while Upbit alone had a trading volume of more than $27 billion.

According to CoinGecko, the trading volume of Japanese exchanges is mainly concentrated in Bitcoin and Ethereum, which is very different from the situation in South Korea, which focuses on altcoins. However, as shown in the above figure, according to the Japan Cryptocurrency Exchange Association (JVCEA), the number of registered accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges continues to grow, indicating the growth potential of the market.

3.1.2. Comparison of interest in representative exchanges by country

Definition of representative exchanges:Centralized exchanges are an integral part of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, as they are the easiest threshold for investing in cryptocurrency and a window for converting on-chain users. Coinbase, Upbit, and bitFlyer are the leading exchanges in the United States, South Korea, and Japan, respectively. We analyzed their keywords to understand the level of interest in cryptocurrency and centralized exchanges in each country.

High interest ratio in South Korea relative to population:The chart shows that Coinbase is the exchange with the highest average value in terms of absolute search volume, but if we look at it in terms of population ratio, Upbit and Coinbase are very close, indicating that the usage rate of cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea is quite high. In contrast, Japan's bitFlyer has relatively low interest in both absolute search volume and relative population, indicating that the usage rate of cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan is still relatively low.

Nature of cryptocurrency environments in various countries:The United States has an active cryptocurrency trading environment centered on Coinbase. Coinbase provides services to users around the world. As of the end of 2022, the number of users who have passed KYC audits has reached 100 million, which exceeds the population of South Korea. In South Korea, as of the first half of 2023, there were 9.5 million registered accounts on centralized exchanges and approximately 6 million active users; while in Japan, as of August 23, there were 7.6 million registered accounts on centralized exchanges, which is relatively small relative to the population of Japan.

3.1.3. Comparison of centralized exchanges and on-chain keywords

Metrics for measuring interest in on-chain trading:Compared with centralized exchanges, the threshold for on-chain trading activities is very high. We analyzed keywords related to on-chain trading and keywords related to centralized exchanges separately to indirectly understand the interest of various countries in on-chain trading.

Interest in on-chain trading:As an indirect indicator of interest in on-chain trading, we selected the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap and compared it with representative exchanges in various countries. In relative comparison, the United States has a higher interest in on-chain trading than Japan, and Japan is higher than South Korea. Although South Korea's cryptocurrency investment activities are active, its interest in on-chain trading is low, and although Japan's interest in Uniswap seems high, this is an illusion caused by Japan's low interest in bitFlyer.

NFT and DeFi:NFT and DeFi are the two keywords that best represent on-chain activities. The United States and South Korea are more interested in NFT than DeFi. It can be speculated that this is because NFT is easier to understand for general users, and there are many short-selling activities, which are easier for users to obtain. Japan's interest in NFT is significantly higher than that of centralized exchanges, indicating that Japan's NFT market is relatively active.

Developer ratio and on-chain interest:According to Electric Capital, the regional distribution of global cryptocurrency developers shows that North America accounts for 28% of the total, while East Asia and the Pacific, including South Korea, account for 11%. Although there is no exact data for a single region in South Korea, the proportion of protocol developers in South Korea seems to be very small compared to the trading volume, which also shows that South Korea is more keen on trading through centralized exchanges rather than developing on-chain technology.

Overall, South Korea has a high interest in cryptocurrency investment and trading, but relatively low interest in on-chain activities such as NFTs and DeFi. On the other hand, the United States has a high interest in on-chain activities, while Japan has a relatively active NFT market.

3.2. Telegram Cryptocurrency Community

Based on 110 Korean cryptocurrency announcement channels running on Telegram, we analyzed the messages sent by these channels in 2023. In order to remove purposeful posts and announcements that are not posted from community interest, our analysis excludes corporate channels and channels that simply share news headlines. Through these analyses, we will understand the Telegram channels that Korean cryptocurrency investors are most proficient in using, the topics that users are interested in, and the sentiment trends over the past year.

3.2.1. Activity Analysis

The above chart compares the Bitcoin price in 2023 with the number of monthly messages in 110 Korean cryptocurrency community channels.

Bitcoin Price and Community Activity:Overall, channel activity tends to increase during periods of rising Bitcoin prices. In particular, the number of messages in channels increased significantly during the Bitcoin price surge from October to December 2023, indicating that price fluctuations have stimulated investor interest, leading to an increase in information sharing and discussion.

Channel Activity in Bear Markets:When BTC prices fell in August and September 2023, it can be seen that the number of messages in the channels also decreased. In bear markets, investor participation tends to be low and community activity tends to be flat.

Peak Hours: By analyzing the number of announcement messages on individual Telegram channels by time period, we found that the peak of activity occurs between 4pm and 5pm Korea time. The number of messages increases from around 9am to 11pm, with the highest amount of activity between 2pm and 6pm, with 4pm being the peak of the number of messages. In contrast, community activity is lowest between 2am and 6am. Overall, we can see that this is similar to the daily life pattern in Korea, and it is interesting that community activity continues even after 3:30pm after the stock market closes or after 6pm after get off work, reflecting the 24-hour global nature of the cryptocurrency market.

3.2.2. Keyword Trend Analysis in 2023

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We analyzed the most mentioned keywords in 110 Korean cryptocurrency Telegram personal channels in 2023 and found that the most mentioned keywords were "Bitcoin", "NFT", "Airdrop" and "Ethereum". Interestingly, although Google Trend shows that South Korea's interest in NFTs is lower than other countries such as the United States and Japan, NFTs still rank high in the Telegram community. We speculate that this is because many projects continue to use free airdrops of NFTs as a marketing tool.

Overall, it can be seen that investors are more interested in things that are obtained for free, and Telegram has a relatively large on-chain user base. It also has some influence. Next, we will look at the hot keywords in the Korean community every month.

January: Focus on macroeconomic uncertainty

In January, macroeconomic keywords such as "CPI", "FOMC" and "interest rate" and New Year-related keywords such as "year-end settlement" topped the list. It can be seen that macroeconomic uncertainty and recession concerns are affecting the cryptocurrency market.

February, March: Airdrops and USDC decoupling

In February, the bankruptcy of Silvergate and SVB and the decoupling of USDC in March caused a sharp decline in market sentiment, but the token airdrops of NFT market Blur in February and Ethereum L2 project Arbitrum in March successfully attracted the attention of the community and revitalized the market. The airdrop successfully helped Blur pose a threat to OpenSea, while Arbitrum's airdrop successfully guided users to use the dApps of the ecosystem, increasing Arbitrum's on-chain activities. As shown in the figure above, the ranking of the keyword "ZK Sync" also rose to the top in February and March, showing users' expectations for future airdrops.

April: Memecoin craze and Sui

In April, memecoins represented by "PEPE" once again set off a hype wave. The price of the frog-themed PEPE token soared more than 80 times in just three days, quickly becoming the focus of attention. The launch of the mainnet of "SUI", a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain platform based on Meta, also attracted the attention of the cryptocurrency community. It was also the first time that the five major exchanges in South Korea listed the same cryptocurrency at the same time.

May: BRC-20 Token Standard and Political Regulatory Issues

In May, the token standard "BRC-20" used on the Bitcoin network attracted widespread attention in the cryptocurrency community. BRC-20 works by recording information on the Bitcoin network using the Ordinals protocol. It is similar to NFT and somewhat different from ERC-20. BRC-20 has many inconveniences, such as the need to issue new inscriptions if users want to transfer tokens, or to establish offline indexers to track wallet balances. Despite this, BRC-20 is seen as a new attempt to demonstrate the possibility of expanding the Bitcoin ecosystem.

In addition, the issue of political regulation raised by the Kim Nam-Kook case also made the cryptocurrency community boil. South Korean lawmaker Kim Nam-Kook was accused of holding and trading billions of won worth of cryptocurrencies, sparking controversy surrounding senior public officials investing in cryptocurrencies. The problem occurred during a standing committee meeting, during which Kim Nam-guk was caught trading cryptocurrencies during a live broadcast, and Kim Nam-guk's involvement in a bill to postpone taxation of cryptocurrencies raised questions about conflicts of interest. In response, an amendment to the Public Officials Ethics Act was proposed and passed, requiring all legislators and senior public officials to declare the types and amounts of cryptocurrencies they hold from December 14, 2023.

June: CeFi platforms go bankrupt

In June, two major South Korean CeFi platforms, Haru Invest and Delio, went bankrupt, shocking the cryptocurrency industry. The platform had been recruiting investors at high interest rates, but suddenly stopped user withdrawals overnight due to reasons such as opaque fund management and improper partner selection. Investigations showed that Haru Invest suffered heavy losses in the FTX disaster, which triggered a chain reaction that led to the bankruptcy of Delio. Losses were reportedly estimated at 130 billion won, and the company is in bankruptcy management.

This incident highlights the opacity and weak risk management of CeFi platforms, especially considering that Delio is licensed by the Financial Services Commission, which shows that the journey of cryptocurrency to gain trust through institutionalization still needs to overcome many challenges. In the Korean community, this incident highlights the pros and cons of CeFi and DeFi, and DeFi is sought after as an alternative due to its transparency of funds on the chain.

July: Ripple wins part of the SEC lawsuit / Worldcoin launched / eyes on the Japanese market

In July, Ripple partially won its lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The U.S. District Court in New York ruled that the sale of XRP to retail investors did not violate securities laws, and many communities believe that the ruling has the potential to change the future debate on the securitization of cryptocurrencies. After the news came out, the price of XRP soared, and because there are many XRP holders in the Korean community, it also attracted great attention from the community.

In addition, Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency supported by Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, which is famous for ChatGPT, is listed on major exchanges around the world. Worldcoin's unique structure is to identify individuals through irises and allocate cryptocurrencies based on this. The Korean community is concerned about the project's privacy issues and its potential as a solution to distinguish between humans and artificial intelligence. In South Korea, Bithumb, Korbit and Coinone listed Worldcoin.

The keyword "Japan" was also mentioned frequently. In July, WebX Tokyo, Japan's largest blockchain conference, was held, and the Korean community mainly mentioned the Japanese government's cryptocurrency policy.

August: Curve hack / Sei mainnet launch / Bitcoin ETF approval expectations

In August, the CRV hack shocked the cryptocurrency community. The decentralized exchange Curve Finance was found to have a vulnerability, resulting in an outflow of more than $50 million, especially considering that Curve’s head had taken out loans secured by CRV in multiple DeFi protocols, which raised concerns among users about possible liquidations if the CRV price fell. Fortunately, the price of CRV recovered after the incident, avoiding the worst-case scenario. However, a decline in community trust was inevitable.

Sei’s listing was also a focus of community attention. At the same time as the mainnet was launched, Sei successfully

was listed on internationally renowned exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance, and the five major Korean exchanges followed suit, which was highly anticipated. Sei’s investor-friendly token economics, such as airdropping 25% of token supply to the community, are also considered to be its strengths.

Meanwhile, the Korean community began to see expectations for the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF in August, with a series of applications from financial institutions including BlackRock and Fidelity, raising hopes for institutional interest and participation. However, the SEC postponed the application again in September, subsequently causing concerns among community users.

September: KBW and Friend Tech

Korea Blockchain Week (KBW) 2023 in September is the largest blockchain event in South Korea. The event was held in Seoul from September 4 to 9 and attracted many industry leaders including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Circle CEO Jeremy Allair, and Maelstrom Fund CIO Arthur Hayes to discuss blockchain in depth. Korean blockchain projects also participated in the event to share their visions and achievements.

Another hot topic in September was "Friend.tech". Since its launch on August 10, Friend.tech has grown its TVL (total value locked) from US$5 million to US$50 million in just one month, an increase of nearly 10 times. There are also many KOLs in South Korea using the service and looking forward to future airdrops, which naturally became a hot topic of the month.

October: $MEME Token and $SPURS

In October, the $MEME token launched by Memeland became a hot topic in the cryptocurrency community. Memeland is an NFT project created by the popular community "9GAG", which has attracted much attention by issuing NFTs such as Captain and Potato. At that time, Memeland launched a farming event and announced plans to launch its own token $MEME. And because non-NFT holders can also earn points through simple social tasks, the community's expectations for future airdrops have increased, making this event a focus of the Korean community in October. In addition, the Tottenham fan token $SPURS, which is mainly based on Son Heung-min, was also listed on the Korean exchange, which attracted widespread attention.

November: Celestia Mainnet Launch and Airdrop

In November, modular blockchain Celestia (TIA) attracted attention from the overall crypto community with its mainnet launch, and its token $TIA was listed on major exchanges around the world, including Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit in South Korea. Prior to the mainnet launch, it attracted attention from investors with a large airdrop to Cosmos users who met certain criteria. Frequent users of the network received an average of more than 300 TIA, and the initial token traded at around 3,000 KRW (2.2 USD).

December: Fusionist Binance Launch Pool / Wemix Relisted

In December, Fusionist became the 40th project on Binance Launch Pool, and the Web3 game has risen to over $10 since its listing, bringing rich returns to investors.

In addition, Wemix, which was delisted a year ago due to liquidity issues, was relisted in South Korea on the KRW trading pair. A year ago, Wemix was delisted by DAXA due to a large discrepancy between the circulation plan information submitted to DAXA members and the actual circulation. A year later in December, Wemix was relisted on Bithumb, and Coinone, Gopax and Korbit followed suit, and are currently traded on four exchanges in addition to Upbit. Although Wemix's liquidity issues seem to have been resolved to a certain extent, Korean investors are still cautious about the public transparency of circulation.

3.2.3. Main sources of information

In order to analyze the information acquisition channels and influence of the Korean cryptocurrency community, we collected message data from 110 cryptocurrency personal Telegram channels in 2023. Based on this data, we summarized the information sources cited by each channel and selected the top ten platforms, as shown in the figure below.

The "Coverage" in the chart refers to the percentage of channels that were cited at least once in 2023. For example, if all channels cited a specific platform as a source of information during the year, the coverage of that source would be 100%.

The influence of X: After analyzing 110 Korean cryptocurrency Telegram personal channels, we found that X (formerly Twitter) was the most cited source of information. After all, almost all Web3 projects have an official X account, and the platform is also the platform with the most cryptocurrency users in the world, so all communities often use X as a source of information. In terms of coverage, X also received a high score of 100%, which shows that X is very influential in the Korean cryptocurrency community.

Korean Media: Among Korean platforms, CoinNess, Naver, and BlockMedia are the most cited sources of information on Telegram, among which CoinNess tops the list with 5,162 citations and 92% coverage. CoinNess focuses on newsletter services, providing users with a quick understanding of the latest trends and issues through real-time translation of overseas messages, which is why they are frequently shared on Telegram. Naver is the largest website in South Korea, whose services include news and blogs. With 3,194 citations and a coverage rate of 99%, the website is also an important source of information for the Korean cryptocurrency community. Blockmedia is a blockchain-specific media in South Korea. With 1,080 citations and 68% coverage, it is one of the most frequently used information sources for the Korean cryptocurrency community. Blockmedia's articles mainly cover traditional financial markets and cryptocurrency market trends, major project updates, company news, and regulatory news at home and abroad. Compared with CoinNess, its reports are less timely and cover more traditional financial markets, so it lags behind in citations and coverage in the cryptocurrency community.

3.2.4. Channel forwarding ranking

The above figure shows the top 10 most forwarded channels among 110 Telegram channels. Retweets are similar to reposts in X, that is, information posted on one channel is forwarded by another channel, which is an indicator that can measure the influence and popularity of the channel.

The most forwarded channel is "코인같이투자 (WeCryptoTogether)", with 168,765 forwards, which is about 34% higher than the second place "취미생활방 (EnjoyMyHobby)" with 125,919 forwards. "WeCryptoTogether" is one of the largest cryptocurrency channels in South Korea with about 33,000 subscribers. The channel provides information and analysis of various projects. Half of the top 10 channels are large channels with more than 10,000 subscribers, which shows that channels with more subscribers have a larger number of reposts.

3.2.5. Channel average repost ranking

Previously, we analyzed the ranking of the most reposted channels. Next, we analyzed the ranking of the average number of reposts per message, which is another indicator of the quality and influence of a channel's information.

In terms of average number of reposts, "유트로의 크립토 서바이벌 (jutrobedzielepsze)" ranked first with an average of 57.5 reposts, which is about 57% higher than the second-ranked "ICOROOTS_Definalist" with 36.6 reposts. It is worth noting that the number of subscribers of "유트로의 크립토 서바이벌 (jutrobedzielepsze)" ranks 8th among all channels, indicating that the quality of information has a greater impact than the number of subscribers.

3.2.6. Information Views Ranking

Looking at the most viewed information in the Korean cryptocurrency community throughout 2023, three themes stand out.

First, Korean users have a strong interest in legal and regulatory issues in the cryptocurrency industry. Content related to negative issues in the industry (such as privacy leaks, money laundering, and financial crimes) topped the list of views, which shows that users are concerned about the uncertainty and risks of the industry.

Secondly, users are very interested in new investment opportunities, especially token sales. Information about Sui token sales ranked fourth and attracted the most views. It can be seen that Korean investors are very sensitive to new projects and profit opportunities.

Finally, in third place is content related to macroeconomic indicators (such as CPI), which has also received steady attention from the community, reflecting investors' tendency to judge the direction of the cryptocurrency market by paying attention to macroeconomic trends.

In addition, although the forwarding volume is relatively low, questions related to specific personal events or specific projects also received high views.

3.2.7. Information forwarding ranking

Looking at the most forwarded information in the Korean cryptocurrency community in South Korea in 2023, we find that airdrop-related information dominates. The most forwarded information is the "Summary of Airdrop Workflow" published on the "Coinmap Hack" channel on March 20, which has been forwarded more than 2,600 times and ranked first. This information details how to participate in airdrops of promising projects such as Starknet, zkSync and LayerZero, and has been widely shared among Korean users.

Most of the messages ranked second to tenth are also about information about benefits that can be obtained for free, such as airdrops and free NFTs, among which airdrops from emerging projects such as zkSync, Starknet, and Scroll occupy the top few. Interestingly, although the information released by "KOOB Crypto" on December 19th, "Ambush Binance Labs Airdrop Project Edzac, etc.", was relatively short, it still managed to rank in the top 10, indicating that information about projects that are expected to receive investment from large exchanges is still influential in the community.

Overall, the most active information in the Korean cryptocurrency community in 2023 is content related to airdrops, and it is particularly sensitive to new and promising cryptocurrency news.

3.2.8. Bitcoin Sentiment Analysis

Using Open AI’s GPT-4 model, we performed a sentiment analysis on messages containing the keywords “Bitcoin” and “BTC” in the Korean cryptocurrency community in 2023. The prompts used in the analysis were designed to determine the positivity, negativity, and neutrality of the messages, as well as the relevance to Bitcoin and the category of the messages. During the analysis, we excluded messages that were classified as marketing and promotion-related, resulting in a total of 22,878 messages.

Based on this information, we noticed a clear increase in the proportion of positive messages in June, and when comparing the sentiment trends with the Bitcoin price chart, we found that positive sentiment generally increased when prices rose, and negative sentiment increased when prices fell.

However, sentiment lags behind price and does not lead price reaction, indicating that investor sentiment changes with price fluctuations, while the proportion of positive sentiment increased in the second half of the year, indicating that users are quite optimistic about the approval of the Bitcoin ETF at the end of the year.

3.2.9. Token mindshare

We continued to analyze the number of times each token was mentioned in the community and defined it as the "token mindshare", which refers to the proportion of a specific token in the total conversation. A high mindshare data represents a high interest in the Korean community.

Through analysis, we found that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have high mindshare in the Korean cryptocurrency community, proving that they continue to attract investors' attention as the main assets in the cryptocurrency market.

On the other hand, Solana (SOL) has had a clear upward trend since July 2023, especially in the spring of 2024, almost on par with Ethereum, which may be due to the recent rapid development of the Solana ecosystem, the increased expectations of airdrops released by various projects, and the growing popularity of Solana's meme coins.

3.2.10. The most positive channels for Bitcoin

By analyzing 110 personal channels using the GPT-4 model, we found the channels that were most positive about Bitcoin in 2023.

The first-ranked channel is "MoneyStack", with 63% of Bitcoin-related information being positive. This channel is also the channel that shares the most Bitcoin information or opinions, with a total of 76 Bitcoin-related information. "MoneyStack" is a professional channel that provides information about Bitcoin and the Stacks ecosystem (Bitcoin L2). It not only actively reports new information related to Bitcoin, but also maintains an objective and balanced perspective. The channel has more than 3,700 subscribers.

It is worth noting that although the channel has a high proportion of positive information, it does not represent any recommendation to buy. In addition to objective information, it also contains information on the technical aspects of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

3.3. X (Twitter)

In the global cryptocurrency community, X (Twitter) has become one of the most important communication channels. Many projects and influential people use Twitter to share the latest information and participate in heated discussions. However, the usage rate of Twitter in South Korea is significantly lower than in other countries, and the cryptocurrency community is no exception.

While the actual number of Twitter users is not public, a report from DataReportal shows that as of April 2023, South Korea had 9.8 million Twitter users, compared to 95.4 million in the United States and 67.5 million in Japan.

This difference is also apparent when analyzing the number of tweets containing Bitcoin keywords in different languages. As shown in the figure above, comparing the number of Bitcoin-related tweets in Japan and South Korea, Japan generated an average of more than 17,000 tweets during this period, while South Korea averaged only 1,700. Even taking into account the number of Twitter users, South Korea's per capita Bitcoin tweets are relatively low.

3.4. DCInside

DCInside is South Korea's leading online community platform, with "Gallery" as the main message board for various topics. We analyzed posts published in the most popular cryptocurrency-related Gallery "Bitcoin Gallery" on DCInside in 2023.

3.4.1. Activity Trends

Analysis of the number of weekly posts on DCInside Bitcoin Gallery in 2023 shows that, similar to the activity trend on Telegram, it increases when Bitcoin prices generally rise, especially in late October and early November when Bitcoin prices soared, with the number of posts reaching a weekly peak of about 45,000 per day. It can be seen that investors in DCInside's Bitcoin Gallery are very sensitive to price movements and actively share information and participate in discussions. On the other hand, during periods of sideways fluctuations in Bitcoin prices, activity is relatively low, proving that low market sentiment affects investor participation in the community.

3.4.2. Bitcoin Gallery Keyword Ranking

By analyzing the titles of articles published by DCInside Bitcoin Gallery in 2023, we found that "Bitcoin" topped the list with an overwhelming advantage, indicating that Bitcoin is still the core currency in the cryptocurrency market and the focus of investors. Most of the altcoins ranked second to tenth are listed on exchanges in South Korea, including Ripple (XRP), which is particularly popular among Korean investors, ranking second. Interestingly, GAS ranks third, and we speculate that this may be due to the fact that GAS soared more than 10 times for no reason in a month, which attracted huge attention and repercussions. GAS then fluctuated sharply, falling 75% in three days.

The only non-token name keyword in the top ten is "Short", which means short selling, reflecting the high interest of DCInside investors in short selling. It can be said that the name is a highly speculative group seeking short-term profits.

On the whole, in 2023, DCInside's Bitcoin Gallery showed the community's stable interest in Bitcoin, and keywords such as "short selling" also showed the speculation of the community.

3.4.3. The most mentioned keywords in each month of 2023

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We also looked at the most mentioned keywords in Bitcoin Gallery article titles by month. In January, "APTOS" was the most mentioned keyword as its price surged more than five times. In July, "XRP" was the most mentioned keyword as expectations for XRP's price increase increased after the company won a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In November, "GAS" was the most mentioned keyword as it surged more than 10 times for no reason. However, GAS subsequently fell 75% in just three days, which can be said to be a typical pump-and-dump behavior.

The changes in DCInside's keywords every month show that Korean investors are very sensitive to short-term market fluctuations and have a high degree of attention to tokens listed on Korean exchanges. However, since these trends tend to favor short-term profits, the platform is less suitable for communicating the long-term value and technological innovation of specific projects.

3.5. Naver Cafe

The above figure shows the number of Naver Cafes based on keywords. The ranking is based on the words that are used alternately with "cryptocurrency". It can be seen that the most commonly used terms in the community are "Coin (币)" and "Cryptocurrency (虚拟货币)".

In order to understand the characteristics of the Naver Cafe community, we selected representative Naver Cafes related to cryptocurrency. The selection method is to search for cryptocurrency-related words from February to April 2024, and collect Cafes that appear at the top of the search results and have a relatively stable number of daily posts.

The search results show that most Cafes focus on price discussions, especially compared to Bitcoin, users are more interested in altcoins. Also because Cafe's focus is mainly on price, Cafe's post volume is proportional to price, showing a correlation with price.

4 Conclusion

In this article, we deeply analyzed the characteristics of the Korean cryptocurrency community on various platforms and the main trends of attention in 2023. Through the analysis, it can be seen that South Korea occupies a very important position in the global cryptocurrency market. For example, Upbit, the largest exchange in South Korea, has the second largest spot trading volume in the world, and Korean users are more interested in cryptocurrencies than stocks, which are indicators that prove the characteristics of this market.

Given the importance and potential of the Korean market, it seems natural for many global Web3 projects to consider entering the Korean market. However, successful entry into the market requires a deep understanding of the characteristics and needs of the local community.

As we can see, the Korean cryptocurrency community has its own unique characteristics. Telegram, KakaoTalk and other communities based on information software are very active and highly speculative, and are very sensitive to short-term price trends. On the other hand, Twitter usage is low, and interest in on-chain activities such as NFTs and DeFi is lower than in other countries.

Based on these characteristics, foreign projects that want to gain a foothold in the Korean market must have marketing strategies and community management knowledge that meet the expectations of local investors, which means that instead of adopting global standards, strategies that meet the needs of the local market need to be adopted.

Especially in the initial process of building the community, it is crucial to win the trust of local investors, and how to use professional managers who speak Korean in order to effectively achieve results will be the key to success. In the long run, it is necessary to get rid of communities that are highly speculative and want short-term profits through the dissemination of information about technology and vision. Having a way to raise the intrinsic value and growth potential of the project to the local community will be an important factor in success or failure.

We hope that this report will help readers further understand the Korean cryptocurrency community and provide meaningful insights for Web3's Korean market strategy. Looking ahead, it is necessary for us to continue to pay close attention to the ever-changing trends in the cryptocurrency market through timely data analysis and in-depth research, and pay close attention to trends unique to the Korean community.

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