The price of Monero and Ripple has risen in the last 24 hours, especially that of the latter cryptocurrencies, while other currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum suffer a decline of approximately 5%.

South Korean investors are boosting the value of Ripple and Monero, as virtually all cryptocurrencies operating in the country suffer from large premiums. The two mentioned cryptocurrencies are the ones that are strongly growing in the South Korean market, with large volumes of daily trading. Bithumb, the second largest South Korean exchange house, represents 35% of the market share of the two cryptocurrencies, while Korbit and Coinone, each register 10% of the global XRP operations, causing the share of BTC-KRW trading market within Ripple's global market rises 50%.

Currently, on Bithumb and Korbit, 1 XRP is trading at 1.6 KRW, which is almost $ 1.5 at the change. If we take into account that in the general market XRP is moving at $ 1.29, it is trading well above its value, assuming a premium of almost 13%. Bithumb trades Monero at a price of $ 467, well above the global average of $ 391, which is a premium of 16%.

Due to the substantial premiums of the South Korean exchange houses, due to the lack of supply, cryptocurrencies with trading volumes concentrated in the South Korean market tend to increase with higher margins and decrease at a slower rate relative to other cryptocurrencies. Ripple, for example, barely dipped on December 23, when the market fell sharply, recording Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash, a more than 30% drop in valuation. XRP at that time barely lost 3% valuation and remained above 1%.

Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin and former Coinbase executive, has already stated that the South Korean cryptocurrency market has been pushing the price of BTC and cryptocurrencies like XRP for months. We saw that Bitcoin, when it was trading at $ 19.700, in South Korea, this cryptocurrency had a premium of $ 4.000.

The high premiums are due to the fact that cryptocurrency exchanges based in South Korea are cautious about the cryptocurrencies integrated in the different platforms. Qtum, for example, underwent a rigorous market assessment process before the Bithumb team allowed it in. Bithumb, Korbit and Coinone are the three largest exchange houses in South Korea and they have very limited currencies that they accept, which is why the premiums are usually so high at these exchange houses.