To date, the Bitcoin (BTC) price tracker CoinMarketCap does not show data from major South Korean crypto exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit. The website uses data from many exchanges to estimate the average price of a cryptocurrency. At the time of this writing, the price of bitcoin was $56,640.
CoinMarketCap content manager Molly Jane ZUCKERMAN said the removal was due to the markup seen on crypto exchanges in South Korea.
A CoinMarketCap spokesperson added:
“If the prices on South Korean exchanges stabilize, then we will add the data back in, but that hasn’t happened yet.”
The last time a price tracking website took a similar action was in 2018. At the time, CoinMarketCap announced that it had excluded some South Korean exchanges from price calculations due to extreme price divergence with the rest of the world and limited arbitrage opportunities.
Given the significant trading volume of this asset on the South Korean stock exchanges, the changes will only affect the bitcoin rate index. Last month, the volume of transactions in the South Korean digital currency market exceeded the average daily amount of transactions in the country’s stock market.
Image: Decenturion