Korean data on Upbit XRP highlights massive algorithmic selling over 10 months

New research into upbit xrp trading suggests a single source may have driven an enormous wave of selling on the Korean exchange over the past year.

Researcher flags persistent seller on Upbit

Crypto market researcher Dom (@traderview2) claims he has identified what appears to be a persistent, algorithmic XRP seller on South Korea’s Upbit. According to his estimates, this entity has offloaded roughly 3.3 billion XRP into the XRP/KRW order book over the past 10 months.

If accurate, the analysis reframes Upbit’s XRP flows as a venue-specific phenomenon rather than a clean reflection of global risk-on or risk-off sentiment. Moreover, it raises new questions about who is behind such steady selling and why it is concentrated on a single Korean platform.

82 million trades and $5 billion in net selling

Dom said he analyzed “82 million trades on Upbit XRP/KRW” and mapped their net imbalance over time. His headline conclusion is stark: “A $5 billion one directional selling pipeline running 24/7 for almost a year,” with an unusually consistent pattern of net supply.

The work reportedly began after an intense intraday stretch that forced a closer look at the tape. “It started with yesterday’s price action. -57M XRP in CVD over 17 hours. It looked insane,” he wrote. “So I ran forensic queries – bot fingerprinting, iceberg detection, wash trade checks. The selling was real. Algorithmic. 61% of trades fired within 10ms. Single bot running 17 hours straight with one 33 second pause.”

However, instead of treating that -57 million XRP cumulative volume delta as a one-off, Dom said he zoomed out and found it matched a longer-running pattern. “-57M isn’t an anomaly,” he wrote. “Upbit XRP/KRW has been net negative every single month for 10 months,” listing months with heavy net selling: “Apr: -165M,” “Jul: -197M,” “Oct: -382M,” and “Jan: -370M.” In total, he put the figure at “3.3 BILLION XRP in net selling. ~$5B.”

He also argued the flow is unusually consistent over time. “Only 1 week out of 46 was positive. One,” Dom wrote, adding that there is “no weekday/weekend distinction” and “no time of day where buying outweighs selling in aggregate.” That persistence is part of why he framed it as something closer to execution infrastructure than discretionary trading. “This isn’t a trader,” he wrote. “It’s infrastructure.”

Cross-venue comparison and weak flow correlation

A key element of Dom’s thread is the cross-exchange comparison. He said Binance‘s XRP/USDT market showed materially less selling pressure during the same windows—”2-5x less sell pressure on the same coin,” he wrote, highlighting a June period where “Binance was net positive while Upbit bled -218M.”

Moreover, he flagged a weak relationship between the two venues’ intraday flows, claiming “the hourly correlation between the two venues is only 0.37.” In his view, that low XRP flow correlation implies Upbit’s net selling is being driven by local factors rather than simply mirroring global positioning or macro sentiment.

Months of cheaper XRP prices in Korea

Dom’s pricing observations added another layer to the puzzle. He said that from April through September, Upbit XRP traded “3-6% BELOW Binance,” calling it a “reverse Kimchi discount.” In effect, XRP on the Korean venue was persistently cheaper than on the global benchmark, which is the opposite of the classic local premium narrative.

That detail matters, he argued, because it suggests the seller was willing to accept consistently worse execution than what was available elsewhere. “The sellers were accepting 6% worse fills than available on global markets, for many months,” Dom wrote. “They don’t care about the price. They need KRW, are mandated to use Upbit, and/or are Korean holders taking profit…” This pattern aligns with an xrp price discount korea relative to international markets.

He then pointed to what he described as a structural break around Oct. 10. “Korean retail went insane. Premium flipped from -0.07% to +2.4% in a single day. Trades 5x’d to 832K,” Dom wrote, adding that the premium “has only briefly gone negative since.” The seller, in his telling, did not retreat; if anything, the pace increased. “And the sellers? They doubled their daily rate. From -6.3M/day to -11.2M/day.”

Systematic seller meets Korean retail flows

To connect this behavior with broader market regimes, Dom said he “bucket[ed] every day by what XRP did [on Binance globally].” According to him, Upbit flow skews heavily negative on down days and especially on crash days, reinforcing the impression of a systematic supply source.

He summarized the dynamic as feedback between a systematic seller and retail behavior: “On moon days, Korean retail becomes a NET BUYER. They’re accumulating,” he wrote. “On crash days, sell intensity is 8x heavier. The systematic seller + retail panic amplify each other. Korean retail buys every rip. The pipeline sells into all of it.” That description aligns with a clear pattern in xrp retail behavior korea during extreme moves.

To support the “machine versus retail” framing, Dom contrasted order-size fingerprints on both sides of the tape. He claimed the sell side repeatedly used round-number clip sizes—”10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 XRP”—with “57-60% of all trades fire within 10ms,” while the buy side showed a large share of “tiny fractional sizes” such as “2.535, 3.679, 2.681 XRP.” He argued that these smaller notional amounts are consistent with KRW-denominated retail tickets, reflecting users who buy fixed won amounts of XRP.

In that context, Dom described the pattern as a clash between a algorithmic xrp seller and a crowd of small Korean buyers. “One side looks like retail,” he wrote. “The other looks like a machine.” This is where the upbit xrp data, in his view, reveals a deep structural divide between systematic execution and discretionary trading by individuals.

Scale, data sources, and the open question

The scale claim is central to why Dom’s thread spread widely in the XRP community. He said “3.3 billion XRP” represents “5.4% of XRP’s entire circulating supply,” moved through “a single trading pair, on a single exchange, in 10 months.” Such concentration on one market pair stands out even in a highly liquid asset.

Dom emphasized that he is working from granular trade-level datasets: “This analysis used tick trade data I collected from Upbit and Binance,” he wrote, citing “82M Upbit trades + 444M Binance trades.” However, he stopped short of identifying a specific entity behind the flow, instead framing the issue as the next investigative step for the community.

He asked who could sustain “300-400M per month for a year straight,” seemingly “doesn’t care about 6% discounts,” and “needs KRW specifically or is in some walled garden and can only use Upbit?” At press time, XRP traded at $1.45, leaving traders to debate whether the pipeline will continue to shape local pricing and liquidity.

In summary, Dom’s upbit trading analysis points to a large, systematic seller moving 3.3 billion XRP over 10 months, raising unresolved questions about identity, motive, and Korea’s role in XRP’s global market structure.