Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The revenues of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017 increased 87.5 times from 2016, reports the Yonhap agency, quoting data of Park Kwang-on, an MP from the ruling Democratic Party.
According to the data which was collected with the help of the government, and based on sales of commissions of each operators, the accumulated commissions of some 30 cryptocurrency exchange operators have reached in the ballpark of 700 billion won (US$648 million) as of the end of 2017. In comparison, in the end of 2016 the sum stood at 8 billion won.
The cryptocurrency exchange Upbit was the No. 1 operator in South Korea with a market share of 52.9%, followed by Bithumb (32.7% of the market share), Coinone (8.3%) and Korbit (6.2%). Presumably, Upbit has collected 194.3 billion won in commissions. The other three major South Korean exchanges had revenues of 317.7 billion won, 78.1 billion won and 67 billion won, respectively.
According to the most recent data of Coinmarketcap, Upbit ranked fourth among the global exchanges with fees, with a daily volume of $1,053,729,086 in the last 24 hours. Bithumb ranks sixth, with a daily volume of $840,926,720.
Upbit rose to the number one spot in South Korea and hovers around the third place globally, just a few months after its launch in the end of September 2017. Analysts point out that since Upbit started operations, the number of cryptocurrency transactions in the country has doubled.
Upbit is owned by Kakao Talk, an extremely popular chat application with millions of users in South Korea. The company also Kakao Stock, a social trading service based on Kakao Talk. Upbit supports more than 110 cryptocurrencies and trading for fiat currencies.