Isn't it said that in a bull market, you should "buy new, not old"? What is XLM? What is HBAR? These coins have never been heard of, how come they are all mysteriously pumping?

What are Korean grandmas buying?

Who is buying these "zombie coins"? In short, it is: the "institutional buy-side" led by the US and the "retail buy-side" led by Japan and Korea. As for the US institutional buy-side, we don't need to say much about it, let's take a look at the data from our neighbor Korea.

According to a report by the Korean media naver.news, on the relatively active Crypto trading platforms Upbit and Bithumb in Korea, the number of user accounts for those over 60 years old has increased by 30.4% compared to the previous bull market, reaching 7.7 million accounts. And as everyone knows, the social distribution in Korea, the elderly hold a total of 67.6 trillion won in cryptocurrency assets, with an average investment of about 8.72 million won per person. At the same time, the deposit amount of the Bank of Korea has also hit a new low, decreasing by 26.95 trillion won compared to the end of June. It can be said that Koreans have taken money out of the banks to "Ku Ku" (a Korean slang for buying cryptocurrencies).

Below is the trading volume list of the Korean Upbit, and you will find that BTC is only a "younger brother" in this ranking. The trading volume of XRP is more than 10 times that of BTC, and projects like XLM (Stellar) and HBAR (Hedera) that are hardly seen in the Chinese-speaking circle are also "famous" on the list.

XRP

One of Ripple's famous products is Ripple Net, which is a global payment network that connects banks and payment providers to facilitate secure and near-instant cross-border transactions. Ripple's technology includes its Interledger Protocol (ILP), which aims to reduce settlement times and significantly lower transaction costs, thereby enhancing financial institutions' transparency and liquidity management. Meanwhile, Ripple also plans to issue a stablecoin, which has potentially huge positive implications.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $5.557 billion

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $5.627 billion

HBAR (Hedera Hashgraph)

Hedera Hashgraph utilizes a novel algorithm called Hashgraph Consensus to achieve high scalability, security, and fairness. The platform is designed to create and deploy decentralized applications (dApps) and services for a variety of industries, from financial and supply chain management to gaming and social networks. Unlike traditional blockchains, Hedera Hashgraph employs a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure to enable fast and efficient consensus among network participants, achieving rapid transaction speeds and minimal energy consumption.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $1.224 billion

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $1.297 billion

XLM (Stellar)

The core of the Stellar network is the Lumens (XLM) cryptocurrency, which serves as a bridge asset to enable seamless value exchange between different currencies, facilitating cross-border transactions. Lumens also play a crucial role in preventing spam attacks and ensuring the security and reliability of the Stellar network. In addition to payment functionality, Stellar strongly supports micropayments and enables the issuance of digital assets through its decentralized exchange feature.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $1.264 billion

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $736 million

ENS

ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service, providing a domain name service similar to how we access internet information through domain names today, but specifically for Ethereum. ENS is built on Ethereum, allowing users to purchase secure, private, and censorship-resistant .eth domain names that can be linked to cryptocurrency wallet addresses or other information stored on Web3 infrastructure. The ENS token has previously often pumped due to V's shilling, and Korean retail investors also love ENS, in line with V's "aesthetics".

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $841 million

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $166 million

SAND

Sandbox is an Ethereum-based metaverse gaming platform where users can create, share, and monetize crypto assets and games. Sandbox has actually been "shelved" by the market for a long time, but Sand has become a darling for Korean grandmas, with daily gains often exceeding 60%, and a 24-hour trading volume that is even higher than Binance.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $582 million

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $267 million

Behind the retail vs. Wall Street battle, the logic behind the start of Bull Market 2.0

But it's not just old coins, there are also many compliant coins (including the above-mentioned XRP, HBAR, XLM). These coins have a lot in common: retail investors basically don't care about them, they were in a downtrend or sideways trend before November 5th, and they pumped directly without giving a chance to get in. So why these coins?

To understand this, we need to first sort out the underlying logic of this bull market.

This bull market is mainly following the US, and the Chinese-language Web3 information actually exists in an "information cocoon". Many people don't know what's happening in the US, Japan and Korea (following the US market).

The logic behind this bull market is fundamentally different from the first half of the year. The first half was a bull market driven by ETF, with the market following the hype of meme and AI, so it was "meme coins" > others; the second half was a compliant bull market after the return of the "Wise King", so the coins being hyped were compliant assets, "compliant coins" > "meme coins" > others. The tokens that have surged this time are mainly those that meet the ISO 20022 compliance standard.

ISO 20022 is a standard for electronic data exchange between financial institutions. This standard is more advanced than the traditional formats used by banks, as it supports larger data volumes and faster processing speeds. Therefore, it is very suitable for fast payments.

If a token complies with ISO 20022, it will be prioritized for international payments.

IOTA

The IOTA token is the native digital currency of the IOTA network, used to facilitate transactions and data transmission within the Tangle. Its free nature eliminates the barriers to micro-transactions, making it very suitable for the micro-transaction scenarios in the Internet of Things. IOTA's focus on scalability, security and seamless transactions is consistent with its ambition to become the foundational technology for the rapidly growing Internet of Things industry.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $321 million

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $181 million

ALGO

Algorand is focused on scalability, low transaction fees and fast confirmation times, making it suitable for a variety of applications, including financial services, decentralized finance (DeFi) and asset tokenization. One of Algorand's key innovations is its proprietary consensus mechanism, Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS), which can achieve fast transaction confirmation times while maintaining a high degree of decentralization.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $388 million

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $317 million

ADA

Cardano (ADA) is a blockchain platform designed to provide a secure and scalable infrastructure for developing decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Cardano is developed through a rigorous research-driven approach, focusing on scalability, sustainability and interoperability to address the limitations of existing blockchain technologies.

Upbit 24-hour trading volume: $534 million

Binance 24-hour trading volume: $1.122 billion

When will the bull market end

However, when these coins have pumped 5x, when will the top be in? The answer may also be hidden behind the Korean grandmas. According to the daily trading volume data of Upbit Altcoin, the recent trading volume has already reached the peak of the March mini-bull. The daily trading volume of Upbit Altcoin can be seen as an indicator of the FOMO signal of the bull market.

A bull market is a great retreat, and when Korean grandmas are all out FOMO-ing, it often signals a cyclical top.

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