UPbit and Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest crypto exchanges, known as a hot zone for crypto markets, reported that their sales have fallen significantly since 2018. According to the news in Decrypt , the annual profit of UPbit’s parent company, Dunamu, fell 93 percent compared to the previous year and fell to $ 7.4 million. The reason for this sharp decline in the two companies is that the demand for cryptocurrencies in the local market has decreased in the last two years. In the busiest months of 2017 and 2018, Bithumb performed 1.2 million BTC transactions per month. That’s exactly $ 7.2 billion. However, in the months of 2019 and 2020, which were the highest volatility and volume, BTC volume fell to 300 thousand. This means that the trade volume of Bitcoin in 2017 and 2018 decreased by 75 percent. Similarly, UPbit announced that its monthly Bitcoin trade volume fell from 1.35 million BTC in 2017 to 250,000 BTC in 2020. Over the past two years, UPbit has recorded an average of 200,000 BTC per month. While Bitcoin’s price has been struggling to move towards the record level of 20 thousand dollars since the end of 2017; The volume of all major cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, including Korbit, Coinone and Gopax, fell 60-80 percent. Bithumb had been fined in the past months by the country’s official authorities for a tax payment of $ 67 million. UPbit was also charged with a false volume claim, which it strongly rejected. Both exchanges experienced serious hacking attacks. Four months ago, $ 50 million of crypto money was stolen from UPbit.
