$100 Million In Q3: UPBit Surpasses Bithumb, Officially Becomes The Most Profitable Exchange In Korea

Despite the bearish market that we are all part of lately, it seems like exchanges are making most of the cryptocurrency prices and trading. One proof for that is UPbit – which is South Korea’s biggest crypto exchange.

According to the data released by the mainstream media outlet Yonhap, the exchange saw a profit of over $100 million in the third quarter of 2018, while Bithumb, which is the country’s second-largest trading platform, recorded a $39 million profit.

This gives UPbit a massive advantage and at the same time marks one of the best quarters for the exchange since 2017, demonstrating a profit margin that is nearly three-fold larger than the one of Bithumb.

Meanwhile, last year Bithumb reported a profit of $400 million – but apparently lost the track and is less than 20% of that in 2018. However, the Bithumb hack stopped the exchange from making big profits – and prevented it from recording around $70 million in profits.

With this, UPbit officially surpasses Bithumb and becomes the largest crypto trading platform in the country based on volume, user base, corporate assets as well as revenue. According to analysts, the involvement of Kakao and its sub-platform Dunamoo played a vital role in this growth – and provided Upbit with a status of legitimacy and decades of track record.

Even two months after the government of South Korea raided the offices of UPbit in Seoul, seizing the servers, computers and hard drives – it was found that the exchange had no illicit trading or suspicious activities whatsoever.