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An independent market analyst who tracks on-chain order-flow data says South Korea’s Upbit exchange may now wield outsized influence over the spot price of XRP, the world’s fifth-largest crypto-asset by market capitalization. In a series of posts on X, the trader known as “Dom” (@traderview2) published a chart of cumulative-volume-delta (CVD) across eight venues that appears to show Korean selling pressure easing just as the token found a local bottom.
Is Upbit In Control Of The XRP Price?
“Korean market Upbit may actually control the price of XRP more than we think. Right when they stopped their selling pressure, we bottomed, despite Binance continuing its selling,” Dom wrote, adding that the market has “slowly staircased up since, with a potential TWAP happening on Coinbase (nearly 15 M $XRP accumulated since).”
The 48-hour chart, covering 2–4 August, plots the net market buys and sells on Binance, Coinbase, Bybit, OKX, Kraken, Bitstamp and Upbit against XRP’s average spot price. While Binance’s CVD line (green) continued to grind lower—signalling sustained net selling—Upbit’s purple line flattened after an aggressive draw-down of roughly 35 million XRP. The inflection coincided with a reversal in the grey price line, suggesting that waning Korean offers may have removed the largest headwind even as Binance sellers pressed on.
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Dom’s thesis is not new. Since April he has repeatedly flagged what he calls “absurd size” flows on XRP/KRW at Upbit. On 6 May he noted –220 million XRP net sold since 11 April, equating to more than $500 million at the time. On 2 August he said Upbit had market-sold 40 million XRP in 24 hours, more than “all other venues combined.” Earlier snapshots on 6 and 16 April recorded 50 million and 30 million XRP of net selling respectively, with sell-side market orders accounting for over half of all prints.
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Those figures matter because Upbit has evolved into one of the world’s deepest spot venues. Last month the Seoul-based platform processed $110.2 billion in volume—6.4 percent of global exchange turnover—ranking fourth behind Binance, Bitget and Bybit. Within its own order books, XRP often eclipses Bitcoin: CoinMarketCap data shows the XRP/KRW pair captured 24 percent of Upbit’s entire 24-hour volume (followed by ETH with 14.1% and BTC with 6.3%), translating to $444 million.
While the data cannot establish causality, the pattern underscores what several liquidity-providers have observed since 2023: regional exchanges can dominate individual asset flows even when their share of total crypto activity appears modest. South-Korean retail enthusiasm for XRP already nurtured during the 2017 bull cycle and continues to funnel disproportionate size into the KRW market in this cycle as well. When that flow turns—as Dom’s dashboard shows—the global price seems to notice.
At press time, XRP changed hands at $3.05, up 4.8% in the past 24 hours.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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