Political black swan, here it comes.

Affected by the emergency decree turmoil in South Korea, the won and Korean stocks plummeted, and the BTC price on Upbit, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, once spiked to $61,600. Upbit data shows that as soon as the emergency news broke, the exchange rate of Bitcoin to Korean won (KRW) plummeted from 130 million won to 93.6 million won, a drop of nearly 33%. Mainstream altcoins also saw double-digit percentage drops on this platform, including recently surging XRP, as well as tokens like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.

Whales scoop up bargains

This event created arbitrage opportunities for smart traders.

Unlike in previous years when smart money could buy Bitcoin at lower prices in Hong Kong and North American exchanges and then sell it in South Korea with a "kimchi premium," this time the situation is ripe for the reverse operation.

According to Lookonchain, as the South Korean market fell, many whales transferred a large amount of USDT to the Upbit exchange to snap up tokens at a discount.

Data shows that within an hour after the South Korean president announced the emergency decree, large traders transferred over $163 million worth of USDT to Upbit. Lookonchain stated on X: "Many whales transferred a large amount of USDT to Upbit, possibly looking for bottom-fishing opportunities." Due to the influx of panic sellers and bottom fishers, Upbit announced that its app and open API services were suspended and delayed due to increased traffic.

Local time at 4 am, Yoon Suk-yeol announced the lifting of the emergency decree, which was only six hours after he announced the implementation of the decree the night before. The Bitcoin price on Upbit slightly rebounded, and as of press time, it was around $88,600.

Bitwise Senior Investment Strategist Juan Leon said in a statement that the discount of Bitcoin on South Korean exchanges reflects the "logjam" of liquidity within centralized venues. He stated that although Bitcoin is a decentralized asset that trades around the clock, chaos can still occur when "special circumstances in a particular place" cause sudden restrictions.

XRP whale activity soars to an all-time high

Data from Bipush shows that the XRP token price has surged fourfold in the past month, becoming the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value.

CryptoQuant data shows that XRP whale activity has reached an all-time high. CryptoQuant analyst Woominkyu pointed out that historically, a significant surge in whale XRP trading activity has been "closely related to XRP price peaks." These transactions have recently surged, pushing the token price to a peak of around $2.6, indicating that whales may be "preparing for potential profit-taking or increased market activity."

Analysts believe that the price momentum of XRP is driven by the launch of Ripple's stablecoin, potential pro-crypto SEC leadership changes, and expectations for the approval of a spot XRP ETF. Recently, at least five companies have applied to list spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States, including Grayscale, WisdomTree, Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital.