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Crypto exchanges in South Korea ranked on won order-book prices, KoFIU sanctions, partner banks, deposit interest and reserves.
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By Alpha Finance Editorial Team
Data maintained by Vince Dioquino
Every fee, rate and clause behind a score links to the Korean page we read it on: the exchange's own help centre, notice or terms, or the FSC's release. We go back over all five, and the FSC's sanctions, every quarter, and sooner when a fee, a bank partner or a ruling changes.
How we score → Editorial policy Report an errorIn South Korea, buying crypto with won means using one of five domestic exchanges. Each takes won through a single partner bank, from an account in your own name, so picking an exchange also means picking a bank. Global exchanges haven't reported to Korea's regulator, may not serve residents, and Korean exchanges block transfers to many of them.
Bitcoin costs much the same on all five, since each runs a public won order book and most have cut fees close to zero, often through offers that need renewing or end on a set date. The real differences are depth, coin choice, interest on idle won and each one's record with regulators. Won prices can run above the world price, so compare exchanges on won prices alone, and expect most to hold your coins for 72 hours after your first won deposit.
All five are reported to the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit. The score weighs the won price on each book, the KoFIU record, reserves reporting, banking and depth, but not the trading volume behind our worldwide ranking. Small arrows after each fee, rate and clause lead to the Korean source.
The top score, the deepest market and the most coins, then the one exchange for KakaoBank customers, each line from its own row.
Digital X (Korbit)₩1,000,000 of Bitcoin cost ₩396 under the market price, the least of the five we could price.9.0 out of 10
Upbit₩1.09bn of Bitcoin near the market price, the most of the five.8.9 out of 10
Bithumb488 coins for Korean accounts.8.6 out of 10
CoinoneThe only platform here that takes won from KakaoBank.8.9 out of 105 of 5 reported to KoFIU4 fined by KoFIU since 2025Won prices read 16 Oct 2026
| # | Exchange | Score | Feestaker / maker | KRW deposits | Proof of reserveslatest published | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Digital X (Korbit)Not on worldwide list | 9.0 | 0% to Aug 2027BTC/KRW | Shinhan, freeYour own account only | Attestation | Visit |
| 2 | CoinoneNot on worldwide list | 8.9 | 0% with voucherBTC/KRW | KakaoBank, freeYour own account only | Attestation | Visit |
| 3 | UpbitNot on worldwide list | 8.9 | 0.05% / 0.05%BTC/KRW | K Bank, freeYour own account only | Attestation | Visit |
| 4 | BithumbNot on worldwide list | 8.6 | 0.04% on requestBTC/KRW | KB Kookmin, freeYour own account only | Not public | Visit |
| 5 |  GOPAXNot on worldwide list | 5.6 | 0.20% / 0.20%BTC/KRW | Jeonbuk Bank, fee not publishedYour own account only | Attestation | Visit |
Score: a weighted blend of six checks, led at 25% by each exchange's report and record with KoFIU. Totals are then rescaled so the strongest of the five reads 9.0. Fines cost regulation marks but cap nothing. The score pills open into their marks. Fees: what a new customer pays per order today, counting discounts anyone can switch on, such as Bithumb's rate on application and Coinone's 30-day voucher. These offers can change at short notice. Places here are never paid for. The order can't know your bank, your tax position or the size of your order, so read it as general guidance, and see the affiliate disclosure for how the site makes money.
Spend ₩1,000,000 on Bitcoin and Digital X's book filled the order ₩396 under the market price, fees counted, while GOPAX's cost ₩21,195 more than the market. We took ₩111,105,000, the middle value of the five books' mid-prices, as that market price.
Extra you pay to buy ₩1,000,000 of BitcoinOver the market price, each bought on the exchange's own BTC/KRW book at its current fee
Digital X−0.04%−₩396Order bookCoinone0.00%₩45Order bookBithumb0.08%₩778Order bookUpbit0.09%₩860Order bookGOPAX2.12%₩21,195Order bookFour of the five sit within a fraction of a percent, and three get there through offers. Digital X charges nothing on any coin until August 2027, Coinone's free voucher lasts 30 days at a time and can end early, and Bithumb's 0.04% rate lasts 30 days from each application. Upbit's 0.05% is a standing fee.
Depth is where they part. Within 0.5% above the market, sellers had ₩1.09bn on Upbit, ₩529M on Bithumb (in the only 30 price levels its public data returns), ₩288M on Coinone and ₩109M on Digital X (Korbit). At GOPAX the same band held ₩36k, too little to fill even a small order near the market price.
Won prices themselves often sit above the world price, a gap Koreans call the kimchi premium. On the morning of our snapshot, Digital X's own tracker put it at 0.63% for Bitcoin.
Everything below comes from the exchanges' own Korean pages and the FSC: fee tables, terms, help-centre articles and notices, every KoFIU sanction release, and Bitcoin priced live on each won order book. Each card opens with the one bank that exchange takes won from.
Top score · Not on worldwide list
Best for the cheapest Bitcoin in won: no trading fee on any coin until August 2027, on Korea's first exchange, now owned by Mirae Asset. Its book is the thinnest of the four big ones.
Good for
Not on worldwide list
Best for KakaoBank users who want fee-free trading across 360 coins: a free 30-day voucher takes its 0.25% fee to zero. KoFIU suspended part of its business in 2026.
Good for
Deepest market · Not on worldwide list
Best for larger orders: Korea's deepest Bitcoin market at a standing 0.05% fee, no voucher needed. A ₩44.5bn hot-wallet hack in 2025, repaid in full, and KoFIU's sanctions cost it marks.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
Solana-network coins worth about ₩44.5bn left its hot wallet. Upbit covered members' ₩38.6bn share in full from its own assets.
KoFIU decided a ₩35.2bn fine for about 8.6 million breaches of customer checks, transaction limits and suspicious-transaction reporting.
KoFIU ordered a three-month partial suspension (no coin transfers for new customers) over 44,948 transfers with 19 unreported foreign exchanges.
Most coins · Not on worldwide list
Best for coin choice: 488 coins in won, the most here, with phone support around the clock. It publishes no dated reserves report, and in February 2026 it mistakenly credited customers 620,000 Bitcoin.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
KoFIU ordered a six-month partial suspension and decided a ₩36.8bn fine for anti-money-laundering breaches, including transfers with 18 unreported foreign exchanges.
Paying an event reward, Bithumb credited 2,000 BTC to each winner instead of ₩2,000, 620,000 BTC in all. It recovered 99.7% before any trading.
Not on worldwide list
Hard to recommend for buying: its Bitcoin book is almost empty, so ₩1,000,000 cost 2.12% over the market. GOPAX hasn't announced full repayment of GoFi deposits frozen in 2022.
Good for
The table below holds every rule behind the order. To mark them we went through every KoFIU sanction the FSC has announced since 2021, read each exchange's terms and fee pages, and captured all five won order books together on 16 Oct 2026.
| Check | Weight | How it is marked |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to buy | 20% | One capture on 16 Oct 2026 took every won order book at once. The middle of their five mid-prices is our market price, and each exchange is charged for ₩1,000,000 of Bitcoin at the cheapest fee a newcomer can get today, switch-on discounts included. On a won book a 0.2% markup, ₩2,000 on ₩1,000,000, still scores 10, and each further 0.1%, another ₩1,000, costs 0.8. |
| KoFIU report and record | 25% | KoFIU's list of reported exchanges, with won flowing through a real-name account at a partner bank, is worth 5. Another 3 come with five clean years of no KoFIU or FSC fine, and only 1.5 if a warning was the worst. The last 2 are lost to any partial business suspension in that time. A fined exchange keeps its place on its other marks, since no ceiling applies here. |
| Security and reserves | 20% | Shared with our worldwide ranking. The reserves part tops out at 4, and the whole 4 needs either SEC-audited accounts or a proof where you can find your own balance with an auditor or zero-knowledge maths behind it. An unaudited proof, or an audit of the reserves alone, gets 3. The monthly agreed-procedures reports that accounting firms write for Korean exchanges get 2, and a stated reserve ratio with no report gets 1. Insurance or a protection fund for customers adds up to 2, the full 2 only when its size is published. Five years of record carry the last 4. Upbit's 2025 hack, repaid in full, cost it 1 there, where an unpaid loss like GOPAX's GoFi costs 3. Each regulator's action, data breach or market failure costs 1 more, market failures 2 at most. |
| Liquidity | 10% | Picture a large buy walking up each exchange's BTC/KRW book. The mark counts every won of Bitcoin that buy could take before the price rose 0.5% above the market, using the 16 Oct 2026 capture. The scale is logarithmic from ₩10 million (nothing) to ₩10 billion (10), so ₩100 million scores about 3.3 and ₩1 billion about 6.7. Bithumb's public data stops at 30 price levels, about 0.1% above the market, so its total reads low. |
| KRW deposits and withdrawals | 15% | Won can arrive only from the one partner bank, from an account in your own name, so a free deposit from it scores 4, or 1 when there's a charge or none is published. The User Protection Act makes exchanges pay a fee on idle won, and 2% a year or more earns 2, anything less 1. None of the five pays out won for free, so the 2 marks for that go unclaimed, and the last 2 reward an exchange that kept its bank partner through the past two years. |
| Product | 10% | Coin count adds up to 3, one mark each at 30, 100 and 300 coins, and the five run from 110 to 488. Every one has a BTC/KRW order book, worth 2. Staking, company accounts, sending coins to your own wallet and an OTC desk for big trades are worth 1 apiece. |
Two ceilings could cut a total. An exchange not reported to KoFIU would stop at 4.0, and none of the five is unreported. Upbit's November 2025 hack came within the past year, which would hold it to 6.0 had its members not been repaid in full. Fines set no ceiling on this page, because KoFIU fined four of the five in 2025 and 2026.
The FSC releases, exchange notices and terms behind this page were all opened on 16 Oct 2026. We'll mark all five again by mid-January 2027, or as soon as the National Assembly changes the 2027 tax start.
Opening an account takes two steps, one at the exchange and one at its bank, and the first weeks come with limits.
Yes. Exchanges must report to KoFIU under the Specified Financial Information Act, and since 19 July 2024 the Virtual Asset User Protection Act has made them keep users' won at a bank, separate users' coins from their own and watch for market manipulation.
Of the 28 businesses on KoFIU's list, 17 are exchanges and only five take won. Together they held ₩5.2 trillion of customers' won at the end of June 2026, across 11.2 million accounts able to trade. Running a crypto business without reporting can bring five years in prison or a ₩50 million fine, and the FSC warns that people who recommend unreported exchanges could face charges too.
Enforcement has been heavy, mostly over customers moving coins to unreported foreign exchanges. KoFIU's partial suspensions, which stop new customers sending coins out, covered March to June 2025 at Upbit, March to September 2026 at Bithumb and April to July 2026 at Coinone, and it fined all three and Digital X. A second law covering stablecoins and other digital assets is being prepared, and the FSC says its post-Bithumb rules will go into it.
Korea has no ombudsman for crypto exchanges, so the exchange's own customer centre comes first. Coinone also runs a fast-track claim for losses its own outages cause.
The FSS takes reports of unfair trading and crypto investment fraud, but says it can't investigate ordinary fraud itself and points victims to the police or prosecutors.
Korean law guards your won more closely than your coins. A bank holds customers' won apart from the exchange's money and must pay it to users first if the exchange collapses, and the exchange pays you a fee on it, much like interest.
For coins, exchanges must keep at least 80% in cold wallets and carry insurance or reserves against hacks. The FSC adds that the Act doesn't make crypto itself safe.
After Bithumb's February 2026 error, when it credited customers 620,000 Bitcoin it didn't have, the FSC said every exchange will have to reconcile users' balances every five minutes, and found the quarterly accounting checks were disclosed only as a single ratio.
Two cases show where the protection ends. Upbit lost ₩44.5bn from a hot wallet in November 2025 and repaid members' ₩38.6bn share from its own funds. GOPAX's GoFi deposit product, run with Genesis Global Capital, froze in November 2022, and GOPAX hasn't announced full repayment.
| Exchange | Latest public check | What it found |
|---|---|---|
| Upbit | Sunghyun Accounting, as of 1 Sep 2026 | Coins held at about 103.64% of what members are owed |
| Coinone | Accounting firm's procedures report, as of 30 Jun 2026 | Coins at 100.13% and won at 140.82% of members' balances |
| GOPAX | Outside accounting firm, as of 31 Aug 2026 | Won at 115.9% and coins at about 100.1% of the ledger |
| Digital X | August 2026 report, published 21 Sep 2026 | Posted on its disclosure page |
| Bithumb | No dated report found | Says its reserves cover 100% or more |
These are accountants' checks agreed with each exchange, done for one day. None lets you look up your own balance, which is why no exchange here earns more than half the reserves marks.
Not investment advice
This page is general information. Nothing on it is a recommendation to buy, sell or trade any crypto asset or to use any platform. Crypto prices can fall sharply. See our affiliate disclosure for how the site is funded.
Each exchange can take won from one bank only, so the bank you hold an account with narrows your choice before price does.
| Exchange | Bank | Interest on idle won |
|---|---|---|
| Upbit | K Bank | 2.1% a year |
| Bithumb | KB Kookmin Bank | 2.2% a year |
| Coinone | KakaoBank | 1.77% a year |
| Digital X | Shinhan Bank | Set monthly, not published |
| GOPAX | Jeonbuk Bank | 1.70% a year |
The interest is the deposit-use fee the User Protection Act requires, paid before tax and only to residents who have completed the identity check. Every exchange charges ₩1,000 to send won back to your bank.
The holds are set by each exchange under a standard rule the FSC and the exchanges adopted in April 2026. Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Digital X stop coins leaving for 72 hours after your first won deposit and 24 hours after each later one. GOPAX moved to risk-based checks in September 2026.
Not yet. From 1 January 2027 the Income Tax Act treats gains from selling or lending crypto as other income and taxes each year's gains above ₩2.5 million at 20%. The start date has already been put back several times, most recently in December 2024.
On ₩10 million of gains in 2027, that would be 20% of ₩7.5 million, or ₩1.5 million. For coins you hold before then, the cost counted is the higher of what you paid and the market price on 31 December 2026. From 2027 exchanges must also send your transaction records to the National Tax Service.
Coins abroad count already. If your overseas accounts, crypto accounts on foreign exchanges included, top ₩500 million on any month-end, you report them to the National Tax Service by 30 June.
All five let you send coins to a wallet you control once you register its address and show it's yours. Transfers of ₩1 million or more carry both parties' details under the travel rule, so they reach only partner exchanges or a registered wallet. Unreported foreign exchanges are blocked at any amount.
That threshold is going. A decree the Cabinet approved on 11 August 2026 extends the travel rule to every transfer. Coins could then reach a personal wallet, or a foreign exchange not rated low-risk, only when sender and recipient are the same person.
The FSS's consumer alerts keep returning to the same few tricks.
From October 2026 exchanges must freeze accounts suspected of receiving scam money and help refund victims, as banks already do. If you've lost money, ring the police on 112 first, then your exchange, which can now freeze the account that received it.
On our scores it is Digital X (Korbit), at 9.0 out of 10, with no trading fee until August 2027 and no business suspension in its KoFIU record. For other needs, Upbit has the deepest Bitcoin market, Bithumb lists the most coins and Coinone is our pick for KakaoBank users.
Digital X's won order book, where trading is free until August 2027, was cheapest on our prices. Coinone with its free voucher and Bithumb at its 0.04% rate came within a few hundred won on a ₩1,000,000 order.
Yes. Every exchange must report to the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, and the Virtual Asset User Protection Act makes it keep your won at a bank and most coins offline. No deposit insurance covers your coins.
Not on gains yet. From 1 January 2027 gains above ₩2.5 million a year are taxed at 20% under the Income Tax Act. Crypto on foreign exchanges already counts toward the ₩500 million overseas account report.
Mostly not. Bithumb doesn't accept foreigners, even residents, and Coinone says banks won't open the real-name account a foreigner would need. Upbit lets registered foreign residents complete its identity check with an alien registration card.
Neither is among the 28 businesses reported to KoFIU, so neither may legally serve people in Korea, and OKX's own disclosure restricts South Korea for derivatives and P2P. KoFIU has reported KuCoin and MEXC to investigators, and their apps are blocked here.
