Hamburger Premium for #Bitcoin in South Korea

Up until a few weeks ago, the talk was of the “kimchi premium” in South Korea, named after the Korean staple food.

Local demand was so high that Bitcoin was selling as high as 30% over prices found in exchanges outside the Land of the Morning Calm.

Today, in the wake of tighter regulations implemented by the South Korean government on January 30, the reverse phenomenon is starting to be observed — local prices are lower than international prices. This is now being dubbed the hamburger premium.

Monday morning in Asia, while Bitcoin was showing a price of $8.000.41 USD on CoinMarketCap, BTC was showing a price of $7,915 USD on South Korean exchanges.

Since late December, savvy cryptoinvestors who had seen the writing on the wall and were dreading having to link their assets to their real identities as mandated by the new regulations have been quietly moving their cryptocurrency holdings to overseas exchanges, such as Binance based in Hong Kong.

What to do when there arises a need to convert their crypto into fiat currency is an issue to be dealt with creatively in the future, it seems.