Coinone, South Korea’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange behind Bithumb, the world’s second-largest trading platform by trading volume, has integrated Litecoin.
Within 24 hours since its integration of Litecoin, Coinone has processed $3.2 million worth of Litecoin-to-Korean won trades, becoming the eleventh largest Litecoin exchange in the market.
South Korea, an Important Market For Litecoin
South Korea is a vital market for Litecoin, primarily because 25 percent of global Litecoin trades are being processed by Bithumb. On a daily basis, Bithumb settles $38.5 million in LTC-to-KRW trades, a trading volume that is more than twice as a large as that of GDAX, Coinbase’s flagship digital currency exchange.
Earlier this week, CCN reported that listing of cryptocurrencies by Bithumb and other South Korean exchanges is crucial for leading cryptocurrencies because the integration of South Korean trading platforms offer immediate liquidity to a rapidly growing market.
“Bithumb has been an important factor in the rapid growth rate of Bitcoin Cash. As the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world behind Bitfinex, the integration of Bithumb provides significant liquidity to a cryptocurrency. The importance of the integration of Bithumb has recently been demonstrated by Qtum. Within five days of integrating Qtum, Bithumb became the largest Qtum exchange market with around 51 percent in market share,” read a CCN report.
Coinone’s Offline Exchange, Litecoin’s Exposure to Traditional Investors
It is important to acknowledge that Coinone operates a major offline exchange which targets institutional investors, retail traders, and high profile investors in the traditional financial industry. It offers direct customer service in the Coinone Blocks headquarters in Seoul and walks through the process of trading cryptocurrencies with clients.
In an interview with News1, a South Korean business news publication, a 53-year-old investor stated:
“Due to the emergence of physical cryptocurrency exchanges and offline customer service operations launched by CoinoneBlocks and Bithumb, many investors in South Korea are rushing to sell their stocks and equity in public companies to invest in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Since the beginning of 2017, the demand for bitcoin has increased significantly and investors have been able to build trust over the cryptocurrency exchange market through offline exchanges.”
Hence, in addition to its liquidity, the integration of Litecoin will be proven to be advantageous for the mid and long-term growth of Litecoin given that the majority of traditional investors in the conventional financial industry rely on Bithumb and Coinone Blocks offline exchanges to invest large sums of capital in Litecoin. The growing popularity of offline exchanges likely led to the demand for Litecoin in South Korea as well, allowing Bithumb to be the largest Litecoin exchange in the market.
Over the past year, Litecoin has demonstrated a rapid growth rate, particularly after Coinbase executive Charlie Lee’s resignation from the company to solely focus on the development of Litecoin. The cryptocurrency has integrated the Bitcoin Core development team’s transaction malleability and scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit), and is also exploring innovative solutions such as atomic swaps to increase efficiency and privacy for users.