South Korean crypto alternate Bithumb has launched a large-scale fee-free marketing campaign to develop its market share aggressively.
Bithumb introduced on Thursday that it’s going to apply zero buying and selling charges to 200 cryptocurrencies on its Korean Gained market, efficient at 6:00 pm KST(09:00 am UTC) and operating till additional discover.
Strategic Shift to Entice Customers
Whereas transactions for these free-fee tokens will depend towards Bithumb’s membership tiers, they won’t qualify for buying and selling factors or maker rewards.
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This marketing campaign stands out from earlier occasions as a result of it’s utilized routinely and not using a separate registration. Bithumb beforehand held comparable fee-free occasions in 2023 and 2024, however these required customers to register a coupon to take part.
Trade analysts view this transfer as a strategic effort to realize home market share amid heightened competitors. Whereas the nation’s largest alternate, Upbit, nonetheless dominates the Korean Gained market, Bithumb has been quickly closing the hole, exhibiting robust progress in buying and selling quantity and new customers. This huge-scale fee-waiver coverage is seen as a transparent technique to actively appeal to customers and speed up its pursuit of Upbit’s market dominance.
In keeping with information from Cell Index on September 16, Upbit’s market share was 59.08% final month, whereas Bithumb’s was 33.42%, indicating a narrowing hole between the 2 exchanges. On September 9, Bithumb’s share even reached 45.6%, closing the distinction with Upbit (51.6%) to simply six share factors.
Only a yr or two in the past, the hole was a lot broader. In September 2023, Upbit held a dominant 60.7% market share, greater than thrice Bithumb’s 17.6%. Nevertheless, the challenger started its comeback that December, reaching 21.7% and finally climbing over 10 share factors in only one yr to hit 31.46% by November of final yr.
How Bithumb Gained Floor on Upbit
Bithumb enhanced consumer engagement in 2024 by UI upgrades, game-mission rewards, auto-trading instruments, and Bitcoin dominance indicators. In 2025, it shifted to a extra aggressive market stance, itemizing extra new tokens than Upbit and specializing in competitively traded “worth cash,” underscoring Bithumb’s push to slender the market-share hole.
Upbit can also be actively defending its market dominance by considerably rising the variety of cash it lists. Nevertheless, it didn’t defend its market lead by pioneering listings however by following Bithumb’s strikes, including lots of the tokens Bithumb listed first. This reactive technique contrasts with Bithumb’s aggressive, proactive strategy.
In South Korea, crypto accounts in home exchanges account for roughly 30% of the inhabitants. In keeping with information from Kaiko Analysis, the South Korean Gained (KRW) has established itself because the second most used fiat foreign money in cryptocurrency buying and selling, solely behind the US greenback.