Upbit and Binance see price difference as high as 150%—Move, the exchange darling, experiences "kimchi premium" fueled by South Korean traders
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Upbit and Binance see price difference as high as 150%—Move, the exchange darling, experiences "kimchi premium" fueled by South Korean traders
The premium on Move tokens also reflects the frenzy of Korean cryptocurrency speculators.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Leek, Foresight News
A new noteworthy trend has emerged in exchange listings.
On the morning of December 10, shortly after its TGE, the L2 project Move exhibited significant price discrepancies across major exchanges. It surged to $2.60 on Upbit, while simultaneously trading around $1.20 on Binance, and at $1.05 on platforms like OKX—once again showcasing a "Kimchi premium" event.
At the time of writing, Move's price on Upbit had dropped to around $0.90, while exchanges like Binance quoted it at $1.05.
The incident traces back to December 9, when multiple exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Upbit announced they would list the Movement token, mostly scheduled for 8:00 PM UTC+8. Binance initially set the listing time for 9:00 PM but later changed it to 8:00 PM.
It’s worth noting that it has been a long time since so many major exchanges simultaneously listed the same token. According to CoinGecko, there are now 39 Move trading pairs across more than 10 exchanges globally. The world’s largest crypto exchanges—including Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, and Gate—have all listed the Move token, a phenomenon the community has jokingly dubbed a “grand slam.”
However, the differing listing times across platforms laid the groundwork for the subsequent Kimchi premium.
According to data from ai_9684xtpa, South Korean exchanges Upbit and Bithumb were originally set to launch MOVE simultaneously at 8:00 PM. However, the smaller Korean exchange Coinone unexpectedly went live at 7:30 PM, with an opening price as high as 998,500 KRW (approximately $700).
This surprise move forced both Upbit and Bithumb to delay their MOVE listings. Upbit eventually launched the token on December 10 at 09:35, with an opening price of 2,263 KRW (about $1.59). This led to substantial price differences for MOVE across on-chain markets, Korean exchanges, and other major global platforms.
So, were there arbitrage opportunities?
After the price gap emerged, platforms including OKX and Bitget suspended withdrawals for Move tokens, effectively locking down cross-exchange arbitrage. Additionally, arbitraging through Korean exchanges requires localized accounts, presenting a high barrier for traders from Greater China. Currently, there is no public information indicating any trader successfully profited from the Move price discrepancy.
The premium seen on Move also reflects the frenzied behavior of South Korean retail traders.
Following Upbit’s listing of Move, CoinGecko data showed that Move’s 24-hour trading volume on Upbit reached $1.36 billion, accounting for 10.88% of the platform’s total trading volume, making Upbit the largest CEX for this token by trading volume.
And it’s not just this token—South Korea’s cryptocurrency trading volume is now approaching that of its stock market.
On December 10, according to South Korean media outlet *The Korea Herald*, local investors have been flocking to alternative assets like cryptocurrencies amid domestic political turmoil. As of 3:30 PM on December 6, the combined 24-hour trading volume of South Korea’s top five crypto exchanges—Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax—reached $14.59 billion. This amount, equivalent to 20.72 trillion KRW, was nearly double the 10.48 trillion KRW traded on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) that day.
Under these circumstances, the reemergence of the “Kimchi premium” in the crypto market is hardly surprising.
Meanwhile, what kind of project is Movement, and why has it garnered support from virtually every major exchange? Its funding scale offers some clues.
Movement is an Ethereum-based Move EVM Layer 2 solution—a fully EVM-compatible Move Virtual Machine, bridging the Ethereum and Move ecosystems.
Movement Labs was founded in November 2022 by Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, both alumni of Vanderbilt University in the United States. Most of the team has prior experience working within the Move ecosystem.
As co-founder Rushi explained, similar to Solana’s Solang and Neon, Movement built Fractal—an EVM interpreter running on Move. Any Solidity code can be executed and fully compiled into Move bytecode to launch the virtual machine. This gives Movement the same parallelization capabilities as Aptos and Sui, while maintaining full EVM compatibility.
Movement Labs has also achieved remarkable fundraising success. In September 2023, it raised $3.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Varys Capital, dao5, Blizzard Fund, and Borderless Capital. In April 2024, it secured $38 million in a Series A round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hack VC, OKX Ventures, Placeholder, Archetype, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs.
In addition, in May 2024, Binance Labs announced an investment in Movement, though the amount was not disclosed.
Beyond this elite lineup of VCs, Movement’s TGE airdrop also left many users highly satisfied.
On December 10, X user KuiGas posted that thanks to its airdrop mechanism and strong backing from top-tier exchanges, the Movement project had become one of the best avenues for ordinary individuals to achieve breakout gains in 2024. Based on a $1.5 billion valuation, the airdrop allocation totaled $150 million. According to his estimate, Movement allocated 10% of the supply—$150 million—to approximately 1 million addresses, averaging $150 per recipient.
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