Trading Delays Occur Frequently
Trading delays occurred on May 11 at Bithumb and UPbit, the two biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea. They explained that trading volumes exceeding their system capacities led to the accidents.
On Bithumb, the BTC price soared from approximately 72 million won to close to 78 million won at around 05:08 and then the chart showed no movement at all for about an hour. On UPbit, figures did not change at all starting from 10:00 and the exchange corrected the error at around 10:58.
Similar accidents have been frequent on the two cryptocurrency exchanges. On Bithumb, three server connection delays occurred this month alone. On UPbit, the same delay occurred in every month of this year.
Under the circumstances, they have been criticized for not trying to prevent the repetition while taking huge fees from the ongoing cryptocurrency craze. Last month, the daily trading volume on Bithumb, UPbit, Coinone and Korbit exceeded 20 trillion won.
In the meantime, the ETH market cap rose to almost 518 trillion won in the morning of May 11. ETH as well as BTC topped the market cap of Samsung Electronics, the largest company in the South Korean stock market. The ETH price soared from 800,000 won or so to about five million won in just five months.
According to industry sources, the popularity of ETH is likely to increase based on its highly practical value. ETH is known as a cryptocurrency more utilizable than BTC. It can be used in transactions and settlements and combined with various applications and services at the same time.