The South Korean cryptocurrency market has pushed the Ripple price up 71 percent over the past 24 hours, triggered by the Ripple blockchain-based payment trial conducted by Japanese and South Korean banks.
South Korea Accounts For 50 Percent of Ripple Trades
Bithumb, Korbit, and Coinone, three of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the South Korean cryptocurrency market, currently account for more than 50 percent of global Ripple trades. Over the past 24 hours, the three trading platforms have processed over $1.7 billion worth of trades, surpassing the combined daily trading volume of Bittrex, Poloniex, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Binance, and Kraken.
In South Korea, investors tend to move rapidly through word of mouth. Once several people are invested, everyone else rushes to invest in that particular asset, as Korbit co-founder and CEO Tony Lyu emphasized several times.
When a leading cryptocurrency like Ripple begins to surge in value within the South Korean market, by 10 to 30 percent, the rest of the investors in the market scramble to invest in it, triggering a short-term surge in the price and daily trading volume.
Cryptocurrencies that are heavily concentrated in the South Korean market such as Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, and Monero tend to increase by large margins and decline rapidly at times as well, because of the abovementioned tendency of the South Korean market and its investors to move speedily based on the trend of the market.
Cause of South Korean Market Demand Surge
Earlier today, on December 13, Japanese mainstream media outlet Nikkei reported that major banks in Japan and South Korea are set to begin the testing of Ripple blockchain and its solutions on Friday. The aim of the joint project is to reduce the cost involved in international funds transfer by nearly 30 percent.
Since the beginning of 2017, Ripple Labs have made significant process in assisting major banks and financial institutions to adopt the Ripple blockchain technology. Banks based in Japan, in particular, quickly embraced the technology of Ripple, forming a consortium of 61 corporations.
In July, Ripple global head of strategic accounts Marcus Treacher said:
“We commend these banks in Japan for taking a giant step forward on behalf of their customers. This is a great example of a regional banks converging into a global real-time payments network for the greater good.”
Ripple Labs and its partner banks in Japan and South Korea are planning to continue the testing of Ripple technologies in the long-term and implement the Ripple blockchain at a larger scale by early 2018.
According to Nikkei, Japanese banks have already developed Ripple-based systems to process global payments on its blockchain network. Cross-border payments between South Korean and Japanese banks will be begin on January 31, if pilot tests throughout December are successfully conducted.
As reported in September, SBI Ripple Asia first announced its foray into instant international blockchain payments to South Korean banks.
“South Korea is one of the most active markets worldwide when it comes to blockchain innovation and trading of digital assets. With trade flows into and out of the country totaling $960 billion every year, we also see a high end growing demand for Ripple’s frictionless payments solution in the country,” said Takashi Okita, SBI Ripple Asia chief executive.