XRP (XRP) price extended its slide on Wednesday, adding to a downtrend that has erased 44% of its value over the past year.
Amid this, a market analyst has highlighted unusual trading activity emerging from South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, raising questions about its potential impact on XRP’s price dynamics.
Study of 82 Million Trades Flags Structural Selling in XRP/KRW Market on Upbit
Crypto analyst Dom claims to have uncovered what he describes as a nearly year-long, multi-billion-dollar XRP selling pipeline. In a thread published on X (formerly Twitter), Dom said his findings are based on 82 million tick-level XRP/KRW trades on Upbit, alongside 444 million trades from Binance for comparison.
According to his analysis, Upbit’s XRP pair has recorded a net negative cumulative volume delta every month for the past 10 months.
Dom highlighted several months with particularly heavy negative cumulative volume delta (CVD), including April (-165 million XRP), July (-197 million XRP), October (-382 million XRP), and January (-370 million XRP). In total, he reports that only 1 of 46 weeks in the sample period showed net positive buying pressure.
Dom argues the selling appears algorithmic. Between 57% and 60% of trades were executed within 10 milliseconds, a pattern typically associated with automated systems. He also observed that sell orders frequently appeared in round-number sizes such as 10, 100, or 1,000 XRP.
Meanwhile, buy orders were often fractional amounts like 2.537 XRP, consistent with KRW-denominated retail purchases.
Furthermore, the analyst noted that from April to September, XRP on Upbit reportedly traded at a 3% to 6% discount to Binance, a “reverse Kimchi Discount.”
“The sellers were accepting 6% worse fills than available on global markets, for many months. They don't care about the price. They need KRW, are mandated to use Upbit, and/or are Korean holders taking profit,” he stated. “Then October 10 happened. The premium has only briefly gone negative since and the sellers? They doubled their daily rate. From -6.3M/day to -11.2M/day.”