Having tracked the East Asian digital asset market for so many years, Korea’s recent moves have truly been surprising.

The market that once pushed Bitcoin to a solid 20%-50% premium—the legendary “Kimchi Premium” that made global altcoins take notice—has now seen a dramatic shift. Daily trading volume on leading exchanges has plunged from a peak of $12 billion to under $2.4 billion, an 80% evaporation that can only be described as a cliff-like retreat. Second-tier platforms are faring even worse, with trading depth so thin that a single order in many small tokens can crash the price, and liquidity is as poor as it was in the 2018 bear market.

Even more surreal is the change in community atmosphere. Those Korean retail investors who used to stay up late analyzing on-chain data and going all-in on MEME coins are now crowding into discussions about whether Samsung’s stock price can break 1 million won, or if SK Hynix’s expansion plans are reliable. Crypto channels are so quiet that even the bots can’t be bothered to post ads—this contrast is honestly a bit ironic.

The logic behind the capital outflow isn’t complicated: the stock market is offering too much. This round isn’t pure speculation—Korean chip manufacturers are actually reaping real, tangible gains from the AI compute boom. While Silicon Valley giants are still making grand announcements, Samsung and SK have quietly ramped up HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) production, effectively gripping Nvidia by the throat.

Retail investors’ logic is simple: rather than gambling on the next 100x coin on an ETH Layer 2, it’s better to buy stocks and enjoy definite premiums. After all, AI chips mean visible, tangible order growth, unlike the crypto market where you’re constantly guessing the whales’ moves. This massive capital shift is essentially “certain returns” delivering a dimensionality-reducing blow to “high-volatility gambling.”