South Korean bitcoin demand surges while onchain profits reach five-month high

Bitcoin’s premium on South Korean exchanges climbed to 1.98% on May 7. That’s the highest it’s been since late February. At the same time, onchain data shows holders are cashing out their biggest daily profits in five months, with BTC trading above $80,000.

Bitcoin’s Kimchi Premium is tracked by CryptoQuant’s Korea Premium Index (KPI). It measures the price gap between Bitcoin on South Korean exchanges and the global volume-weighted average.

The 2% reading is a sharp turnaround from early March, when the index had dropped to a 2.27% discount after the U.S.-Iran conflict kicked off.

Strict controls on funds and KYC checks on residency are in place in South Korea. There is almost no way to do BTC arbitrage. The CryptoQuant KPI is used to measure real-time differences in demand between one place and another.

The premium jumps when Korean buyers buy more Bitcoin. But if they sell, the KPI can go down.

Bitcoin experiences nine volatile weeks

The swing from discount to premium wasn’t clean. CryptoQuant data shows the KPI bounced around throughout March.

Most of the month saw pronounced discounts before a brief recovery around March 27 and 28, tacked on about a percentage point. April stayed mostly positive, with some scattered dips.

The May 7 reading of 1.98% was the first time the index got close to 2% since the day before the U.S.-Iran conflict.

The premium had already cooled to 0.77% when measured against Upbit’s BTC price and current global VWAP figures.

Bitcoin’s profit-taking accelerates alongside the premium

CryptoQuants’s head of research, Julio Moreno, reported that holders realized 14,600 BTC on May 4. This is the highest single-day profit figure since December 10, 2025.

The Short-Term Holder Spent Output Profit Ratio (STH-SOPR) rose to 1.016 and has stayed above 1.00 since mid-April. STH-SOPR tracks whether recent buyers are selling BTC above or below their cost basis

That puts Bitcoin in what Moreno described as “clear profit-taking territory.”

On a 30-day rolling basis, net realized profits hit 20,000 BTC. The metric had plunged as low as negative 398,000 BTC during February and March when prices tanked amid the conflict’s early stages.

Bear market rally, not a bull market

Even though Bitcoin jumped by +20% since early April, Moreno pushed against labeling the move as a bull market rally.

“This distinction reinforces the bear market rally classification rather than a structural regime change,” he wrote.

Net profits of 20,000 BTC are far below the 130,000 to 200,000 BTC range that was recorded in bear-to-bull market transitions.

Unrealized profit margins have climbed back to ~18%, up from negative 29% in February and March. When unrealized gains rise, holders get tempted to sell and lock in returns. That raises the odds of a pullback.

Still, Moreno said a correction may not land quickly. Perpetual futures demand keeps growing, spot demand contraction stays mild, and exchange inflows are muted.

He called the current setup “consistent with a rally that carries meaningful correction risk but has not yet reached a confirmed distributional peak.”

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $80,903.51, up by 2.9% in the seven-day timeline.

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