Crypto turnover falls sharply as retail money flows into Korea's record-breaking equity rally, bringing Samsung closer to bitcoin in market value (123rf) Amid the benchmark Kospi's record-breaking rally, South Korea's cryptocurrency market has slowed, with trading volumes falling sharply as investors rotate into equities.Retail investors have been shifting funds from cryptocurrencies into equities as the Kospi extends its rally, reaching an intraday record high above 8,800 as of press time on Monday.Investor appetite for virtual assets, on the other hand, has been dampened by bitcoin's decline from last year's peak as geopolitical uncertainties and the global AI stock boom continue to weigh on the market.Daily trading volume on the Kospi stood at 118.27 trillion won ($78.3 billion) on Friday, according to the Korea Exchange.In comparison, data from crypto data platform CoinGecko showed that the combined 24-hour trading volume of Korea's five major cryptocurrency exchanges — Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax — stood at 2.71 trillion won on the same day, taking up just 2.03 percent of Kospi's total turnover.The contrast is particularly striking considering that the trading volume for cryptocurrencies surpassed that of the benchmark index in July 2025, when bitcoin, the world's largest virtual asset, traded at around 140 million won, around 30 percent higher than its price of roughly 108 million won as of 1 p.m. Monday.In July, the combined 24-hour trading volume on Korea's top five crypto exchanges reached roughly 17 trillion won, surpassing the Kospi's average daily turnover that month of 10 trillion to 15 trillion won.Even the "kimchi premium" — the tendency for cryptocurrencies to trade at higher prices in Korea than on overseas exchanges due to the country's relatively closed trading environment — has largely disappeared, even slipping into negative territory, pricing in eased interest for virtual assets.According to crypto data platform Cryprice, bitcoin's kimchi premium stood at minus 2.8 percent as of 1 p.m., meaning the cryptocurrency was trading at a discount.The diverging price trajectories have brought Samsung Electronics and bitcoin to near parity in market value, with the country's largest listed company now standing shoulder to shoulder with the world's largest cryptocurrency.As of 1 p.m., Samsung Electronics was valued at 2,040.35 trillion won, or $1.36 trillion, putting it within striking distance of Bitcoin's $1.47 trillion market capitalization. Samsung Electronics' market cap surpassed 2,000 trillion won for the first time on Monday.SK hynix, the market's second-largest company by market value, was also closing in on the cryptocurrency, with a market cap of 1,686.25 trillion won.The slowdown in crypto trading has already been reflected in the earnings of local exchanges. The country's top crypto exchanges reported first-quarter revenue declines of more than 50 percent from a year earlier, as a sharp drop in trading volumes weighed on their performance."Strong gains in the domestic stock market have drawn funds away from cryptocurrencies, resulting in weaker trading activity in the virtual asset market," an official from a local crypto exchange said.