South Korea’s regulated won exchanges have moved away from tokens debuting exclusively in their domestic market and toward assets with an established overseas trading record. Research by Bonanza Lab, presented in an article by tranks and translated by TechFlow, links that shift to fewer investment warnings and delistings—but also identifies a potential trade-off for exchanges dependent on spot-trading fees.
Original publication: November 6, 2026, at 22:00:46 UTC+8. The report’s 2026 figures cover the period through October where specified.
Regulation reshaped the listing pipeline
Across Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, the share of new Korean won trading pairs involving tokens that debuted exclusively in South Korea fell from 85% in 2019 to 9% in 2024, according to Bonanza Lab’s data.
The report traces this change to two stages of regulatory and industry rulemaking:
- Registration and banking requirements in 2021. South Korea’s Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information took effect in March 2021, with exchanges required to complete registration by September. Won-market operators needed bank-provided real-name account arrangements and had to meet stringent anti-money-laundering requirements. The report argues that these obligations reshaped listing decisions.
- Common listing standards. The five exchanges formed the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance, or DAXA, in 2022. Its listing best-practice standards took effect in July 2024. An overseas listing was not an absolute prerequisite, but assets traded on compliant overseas exchanges for at least two years could be treated as satisfying basic review requirements, including those concerning white papers and disclosures.
The number of exclusively domestic debut tokens fell from 19 per quarter to just three in the third quarter of 2021, when the registration deadline arrived. Exchanges subsequently shifted toward assets already traded abroad.
Through October 2026, the domestic-only debut share had recovered to 18%. Excluding assets that had already traded in overseas futures markets, however, the share was 10%.
More listings, but different timing
The retreat from domestic-only launches did not mean fewer listings overall. New won-market listings at Upbit and Bithumb increased from 43 in 2022 to 116 in 2023, 125 in 2024 and 238 in 2025.
The report also identifies a relationship between market conditions and how quickly exchanges admitted overseas-traded assets:
- In 2025, when bitcoin’s won-denominated price was near record highs, 111 assets entered the Korean market within 30 days of their overseas listing. They represented 47% of that year’s new listings.
- In 2026, assets with more than one year of overseas trading history formed the largest group: 52 listings, or 31% of the total. Exchanges also introduced tokens such as CRV and RSR, which had traded abroad for more than six years.
The report’s interpretation is that exchanges retained an overseas-first selection framework while adjusting listing speed to market conditions.
Warnings and delistings became less common
Among newly listed assets, the proportion receiving an investment warning or having trading terminated within two years fell from 24% for the 2020 listing cohort to 10% for the 2024 cohort.
The difference between listing categories was substantial. For assets listed from 2020 through 2024:
| Listing category | Assets listed | Warning or delisting within two years | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exclusively Korean debuts | 148 | 44 | 30% |
| Assets traded overseas first | 279 | 26 | 9% |
These figures concern exchange warnings and trading termination. They should not be read as a measure of every risk associated with a token.
The research also found smaller initial price declines among assets with longer overseas trading histories. Tokens introduced in Korea within 30 days of their overseas debut recorded a median price decline of 39% over their first 30 days in the Korean market. For assets with more than a year of overseas trading history, the corresponding median decline was 7%.
The reported pattern associates longer overseas trading histories with fewer listing-related warnings or delistings and smaller early price drawdowns. The article expects established overseas-traded assets to remain central to Korean listing strategies, partly because the best-practice standards reduce their basic review burden.
The revenue trade-off for exchanges
For exchange operators, the shift creates a different commercial problem. The report says that established assets already traded extensively abroad tend to generate less speculative activity on their first day in Korea.
Because South Korean exchanges rely heavily on spot-trading fees for operating revenue, weaker listing-day activity can weigh on earnings. Fewer warnings and delistings may improve the reported listing outcomes without necessarily improving the exchange’s revenue model.
The article allows for a cyclical reversal: another bull market could bring more recently launched overseas tokens into Korea and temporarily ease revenue pressure. Its broader conclusion, however, is that adjusting listings to market sentiment alone is unlikely to produce a stable, cycle-resistant business.
The challenge identified by the report is therefore not simply which tokens to list, but how exchanges can develop trading demand and revenue sources beyond listing-driven activity.
Source: Original TechFlow article, by tranks (@heytranks), translated by TechFlow. Data and statistical support: Bonanza Lab.