South Korea’s retail investors ditched big tech stocks and shifted to ETH-related stocks

South Korean retail investors have reportedly ditched U.S.-listed big tech stocks like Alphabet and Tesla and have bought $259M worth of Peter Thiel-backed BitMine shares since early July. Korea Securities Depository claimed BitMine shares were the most popular foreign stock in the country. 

South Korean retail investors, who are reportedly drawn to high-risk, high-reward crypto opportunities, are now heavily targeting ETH treasury BitMine Immersion Technologies stocks. The U.S.-listed company recently transitioned from Bitcoin mining to an ETH treasury to accumulate and hold the token. It now has over $3.6B worth of ETH. Cryptopolitan recently reported that BitMine was considering issuing stocks of up to $20B to purchase more ETH.

The BMNR rally reportedly highlights the speculative fervor that has gripped South Korean crypto retail investors. Nearly a third of the country’s population (~18M) is active in crypto markets, and they are currently drawn to everything from leveraged crypto ETFs to stablecoins.   

Japanese entrepreneur says ‘Ethereum is Korea’s

One Japanese entrepreneur who has been a crypto investor since 2021 claimed the recent BMNR rally was driven by South Korean nationalistic sentiment. He added that the community interpreted Ethereum as being held and controlled by BitMine since it became the largest ETH treasury firm. 

According to his understanding, South Koreans were responding to Tom Lee’s promotion of the latest ETH wave. He said Korean investors were bullish on BMNR because Lee, of Korean descent, was the Chairman of BitMine, the only U.S.-listed crypto-related company with an Asian boss. Ultimately, combining the factors of crypto, high-volatility stocks, and a Korean-descent influencer, BitMine and Lee were now in South Korea, comparable to the founder of LUNA back in the day.

The entrepreneur believes the current ETH wave is “indirectly being frantically pushed by Korean brothers.”  He argued that historically, whatever the Korean brothers hyped tended to skyrocket quickly. The Japanese trader cited this cycle’s high with XRP, saying it was now BMNR and ETH’s turn.

The Korea Securities Depository claimed that BitMine recorded the highest U.S. stock purchases from last month to August 12. Half of the top seven net-bought stocks, excluding ETFs, were crypto-related firms, including Coinbase, SharpLink Gaming, and Robinhood. The Genius Act reportedly led to a surge in crypto-related stock purchases, with ETH-based stocks leading the trend.   

Shin says U.S. tariffs will ‘dampen individual overseas investment’

A Senior Researcher at the Korea International Finance Center, Shin Sool-wi, said the effects of Trump’s tariffs on the real economy were likely to dampen individual Korean’s overseas investments “for the time being.” Seohak ants (Korean term for individual foreign stock investors) were dumping the seven Big Tech stocks (the Magnificent Seven) in favor of BitMine, which was associated with a Korean celebrity, Tom Lee. The International Finance Center also believes that the surge in M7 share prices led Korean retail investors to be cautious about chasing stock purchases. 

Korea’s financial investment industry predicts that retail investor purchases of U.S.-listed stocks will slow down. Domestic retail investors bought $3.8 billion worth of U.S. stocks between January and April this year. However, they sold stock worth $1.29 billion in May and $390 million in June. They again bought $490 million worth of U.S. stocks in July. Korean retail investors also sold off 300 billion Won and 230 billion Won worth of Apple and Alphabet stocks, respectively.

The International Finance Center estimated that returns on investments in the top 50 foreign stocks held by Seohak Ants had also slowed. It skyrocketed to 16% in May, up from 4% in April, before declining to 5% in June and later to 4.2% in July.

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