A notable phenomenon has emerged in the listing of tokens on exchanges.
On the morning of December 10th, the Layer2 project Move, which had just completed its TGE, saw significant price differences across major exchanges. At one point, the price on Upbit soared to $2.6, while the price on Binance was only around $1.2, and other platforms like OKX reported a price of $1.05. This once again witnessed the "kimchi premium" phenomenon.
As of the time of writing, the price of Move on Upbit has fallen back to around $0.9, while the prices on Binance and other exchanges are around $1.05.
The origin of this event can be traced back to December 9th, when multiple exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Upbit announced the listing of the Movement token, with the majority of the listings occurring around 8 PM UTC+8. Binance initially announced a 9 PM listing time, but later changed it to 8 PM.
It is worth noting that the simultaneous listing of the same token on multiple exchanges has been a rare occurrence in the market for a long time. According to CoinGecko's statistics, there are currently 39 Move trading pairs across more than 10 exchanges, with the world's largest crypto exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, and Gate all listing the Move token, a phenomenon dubbed the "grand slam" by the community.
It was the different listing times across these platforms that laid the foundation for the subsequent "kimchi premium".
According to data released by ai_9684xtpa, the Korean exchange platforms Upbit and Bithumb were originally scheduled to list MOVE at 8 PM last night, but the smaller Korean platform Coinone unexpectedly listed it at 7:30 PM, with an opening price of 998,500 Korean won (around $700).
This unexpected move forced the two major Korean exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, to postpone their MOVE listings. Upbit chose to list it at 09:35 on December 10th, with an opening price of 2,263 Korean won (around $1.59). This subsequently led to significant price differences between the on-chain, Korean exchanges, and other major exchanges.
So, are there any arbitrage opportunities?
After the price differences emerged, platforms including OKX and Bitget have suspended the withdrawal function for the Move token, effectively locking the arbitrage channel between exchanges. As for arbitrage opportunities in the Korean exchanges, they require specific account support, which poses a high threshold for traders in Greater China. Currently, there is no information on any traders successfully profiting from the Move price differences.
The premium on the Move token also reflects the frenzy of Korean crypto traders.
After the listing on Upbit, according to CoinGecko data, the 24-hour trading volume of MOVE on Upbit reached $1.36 billion, accounting for 10.88% of the platform's total trading volume, making Upbit the CEX with the largest trading volume for this token.
It's not just this token, as the trading volume of cryptocurrencies in South Korea is starting to approach the volume of the stock market.
On December 10th, according to a report by the Korean media outlet koreaherald, influenced by the domestic political situation in South Korea, local investors have flocked to alternative assets such as cryptocurrencies. As of 3:30 PM on December 6th, the 24-hour trading volume of the top five cryptocurrency exchanges in Korea - Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax - was $14.59 billion, which is equivalent to 20.72 trillion Korean won, nearly double the 10.48 trillion Korean won trading volume of the Korea Composite Stock Price Index on the same day.
Against this backdrop, the reappearance of the "kimchi premium" in the cryptocurrency market is not surprising.
So, what is the background of the Movement project that has gained the favor of all these exchanges? A glimpse can be gained from its financing scale.
Movement is an Ethereum-based Move EVM Layer2 solution, a fully EVM-compatible Move virtual machine that is compatible with both the Ethereum and Move ecosystems.
The Movement Labs team was founded in November 2022, with co-founders Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, both of whom are alumni of Vanderbilt University. The majority of the team has prior experience working in the Move ecosystem.
According to the introduction by co-founder Rushi, similar to Solana's Solang and Neon, Movement has built Fractal, an EVM interpreter running on Move. Any Solidity code can be executed and fully compiled into Move bytecode to launch the virtual machine. In this way, Movement has the same parallelization capabilities as Aptos and Sui, while maintaining EVM compatibility.
Movement Labs' financing has also been highly successful. Its Pre-seed round in September 2023 raised $3.4 million, led by institutions such as Varys Capital, dao5, Blizzard Fund, and Borderless Capital. Its Series A round in April 2024 raised $38 million, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hack VC, OKX Ventures, Placeholder, Archetype, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, dao 5, and Aptos Labs.
In addition, in May 2024, Binance Labs announced an investment in Movement, although the specific amount was not disclosed.
Beyond the endorsement of the VC heavyweights, the airdrop for Movement's TGE has also satisfied many users.
On December 10th, user KuiGas posted that the Movement project, with its airdrop mechanism and support from top-tier exchanges, has become one of the best targets for ordinary people to make a comeback in 2024. According to the $1.5 billion valuation, the airdrop allocation is as high as $150 million, which, based on the calculations, means around 100,000 addresses will each receive approximately $150 worth of the airdrop.
