Reason for depressed bitcoin volumes in Korea? Why is ethereum the dominant coin?

[Windowly]

Does anyone know why ethereum is much more heavily traded in Korea compared with bitcoin? Koreans have just started this last year or so getting massively into cryptocurrency but it's rather disheartening ethereum is so popular.

This is the last twenty-four hours in the two biggest exchanges.


Of course GDAX is also 46% ethereum, 40% bitcoin trading.

[rogerver]

A Korean friend of mine living in Japan recently told me that Bitcoin has a very bad reputation in Korea and is associated with illegal things in the mind of the public.
I don't know how accurate that is since this person has been living in Japan for nearly 20 years now.

[Windowly]

A Korean friend of mine living in Japan recently told me that Bitcoin has a very bad reputation in Korea and is associated with illegal things in the mind of the public.
I don't know how accurate that is since this person has been living in Japan for nearly 20 years now.

Interesting. That could be a big part of it.

I've also wonder if it's because bitcoin is relatively cheap per coin. I know a Korean who bought ethereum instead of bitcoin because he liked the idea of easily having several of an item. In either case bitcoin definitely seems to have a marketing problem.