It was confirmed that the cryptocurrency holdings of the four major South Korea cryptocurrency exchanges have declined significantly compated to that of 2018. Only Coinone increased their holdings through the result of the increase in the funding and listing.
The financial statements of all four major exchanges were released this month; accordingly, the details of the cryptocurrencies held by them were also presented. It is notable that most of them reduced their holdings of cryptocurrencies.
The Upbit owned the least amount. It currently has a total of 4,448,000 cryptocurrencies, of which are mostly USDT (Tether). Out of the 4,448,000 cryptocurrencies, Upbit has 195 Bitcoins and 616 Ethereum, and the rest were all Tether. Adding them all up, it’s 6.6 billion Korean won.
Even back in 2018, the company only owned those three cryptocurrencies. Back then, it owned 4,632 Bitcoins, 2,003 Ethereum and 4,220,000 Tether, totaling to 32.3 billion Korean won. It is believed that Upbit exchanged a large sum of Bitcoin with Ethereum, due to 342,000 Ethereum being hacked in November of last year. After it was hacked, Dunamu announced that they have filled the hacked (i.e. lost) amount with their own assets. This quarter, Dunamu released a statement “this report reflected the loss amount of cryptocurrency that was thefted in the last December.” For Upbit, the overall profit gained by the disposal of cryptocurrencies for the current period is 26.6 billion Korean won, where as the total loss amount is 6.4 billion Korean won.
Coinone seemed to have expanded their holdings of listed coins. It had about 20 cryptocurrencies in 2018, but last year it had almost all listed coins including the three major ones. Coinone didn’t release the detailed figures.
Compared to 2018, the amount of cryptocurrency evaluation has also increased significantly. At the time, the evaluation amounted to 78 million won, however it has now increased to 1.3 billion won. This is because the number of cryptocurrencies increased due to the additional listing of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Coinone especially increased their holdings on Bitcoin and Ethereum (99 and 861, respectively) since 2018. They also bought 32,435 Cosmos (ATOM) coins. The representative of Coinone says “last year we had to sell some of them to fill the operating costs but this year we didn’t had to” and that they even “increased their holdings thanks to the additional listings of coins.”
Coinone saw 589 million Korean won as their revenue with the loss of 333 million Korean won due to the disposal of some coins.
Bithumb, which had a total of 2.6 billion cryptocurrencies in 2018, reduced their holdings to approximately 710 million in 2019. While the overall amount is significantly reduced, they still hold the most cryptocurrencies among all the exchange companies.
Bithumb had 2.2 billion cryptocurrencies (about 6.6 billion won) in 2018. This year, their holdings reduced to 557 million (about 3 billion won). Their holdings of Ethereum decreased from 43,846 to 14,216; and Ripple (XRP) from 23 million to 2 million. For Bitcoin, it increased to 856, compared to 514 of 2018. Adding them all up, Bithumb owns about 17.4 billion won – with approximately 1.9 million less in cryptocurrencies and 31 billion won in assets. According to their released statement, the profit was 9.6 billion won, whereas the loss was 14.4 billion won. It became the only exchange with greater loss than profit among the all the exchanges.
There are some with increase types of cryptocurrencies but with less amount. Korbit had 12.7 million cryptocurrencies last year which amounts to 3.8 billion won; compared to the year before, it’s about 20% less in cryptocurrency and 5.2 billion won in loss. On the other hand, the types of currencies they have increased from 23 to 30. It is estimated that this was due to the additional listings of various cryptocurrencies. Overall, Korbit profited about 1.2 billion won and lost 140 million due to their disposal of their holdings.
At the time of the current disclosure, it was found that the price of most of cryptocurrencies decreased except for Bitcoin. Bitcoin was valued 4,265,000 won last period but 8,343,000 this period. Compared to last period, it has increased 96%, a significant contrast from the rest of the cryptocurrencies.
On the other hand, Ripple’s price decreased from 401 won to 222 won. Bitcoin Gold (BTG) went from 14,300 won to 6,285 won and Zcash (ZEC) from 65,300 won to 32,550 won. Ethereum also showed a small decline, from 154,200 won to 151,700 won.
Only a small number of cryptocurrencies maintained or increased: Litecoin went from 34,830 won to 48,960 won and Bitcoin Cash from 176,800 won to 243,700 won. Eos coin also slightly increased from 2,939 won to 3,018 won.
