$RLUSD Listing Brings Regulatory Certainty to South Korea

The South Korean cryptocurrency market has strengthened its infrastructure for assets within the Ripple ecosystem. Bithumb, the country's second-largest exchange, officially launched spot trading for Ripple's regulated stablecoin, $RLUSD, against the Korean won (KRW) on the same day that Upbit, the leader of the local market, made a similar move.

The new won-denominated pairs immediately took high positions in the overall list of markets for the young stablecoin, according to current CoinMarketCap data. However, these rankings are an illusion of success caused by $RLUSD's global network of trading pairs being too small, with combined South Korean exchange volume accounting for only 0.74% of the coin's worldwide trading volume.

The main purpose of any stablecoin is to maintain a price of exactly $1.00. However, $RLUSD is trading in South Korea at a discount of 1-1.5%, or a depeg, at around $0.986, $0.989, pointing to specific problems with local market makers not establishing effective arbitrage mechanisms and aligning the exchange rate with the global market.