Korea’s Market Shows $5B One-Way XRP Selling Machine Running for Nearly a Year

Market data shows a trend involving one-way trades that sold up to $5 billion worth of XRP in Korean markets.

XRP has been under pressure for months, falling 47% since October 2025. As the price kept sliding, market analyst and order book expert Dom dug into trading data on Upbit and found trends pointing to a steady stream of selling on the XRP/KRW pair that has been running almost nonstop for close to a year.

Dom based his research on 82 million tick-level trades from Upbit and 444 million trades from Binance. After reviewing the numbers, he concluded that a large automated seller has been unloading XRP in a consistent and structured way, separate from what the broader global market shows.

Key Points

• Amid the ongoing XRP price struggles, an order book expert found a consistent automated selling pattern in the Korean market.
• Upbit’s XRP/KRW pair recorded net negative flows every month for 10 consecutive months, totaling 3.3 billion XRP or $5 billion.
• One automated bot operated almost nonstop for 17 hours at a time, executing 61% of trades within 10 milliseconds using consistent round-number sizes.
• From April to September, Upbit XRP traded 3-6% below Binance prices, with sellers accepting worse fills, likely due to KRW liquidity requirements.
• Retail traders bought during strong rallies, while crash days saw sell intensity eight times higher, showing that algorithmic selling and retail behavior complemented each other.
• 28% of buy trades were tiny fractional KRW-denominated orders, indicating that there could be two different trading profiles involved in the pattern.

A Full Year of Heavy XRP Selling

Dom confirmed that he began his analysis after witnessing 57 million XRP in negative cumulative volume delta over just 17 hours. The size of the drop was questionable, so the analyst ran deeper checks, including bot fingerprinting, iceberg detection, and wash trade reviews. 

Notably, he found that the selling was real and driven by algorithms. Specifically, around 61% of trades happened within 10 milliseconds, and one bot appeared to run for 17 straight hours with only a single 33-second break.

Meanwhile, on a higher timeframe, Upbit’s XRP/KRW pair showed net negative flows every month for 10 months in a row. April recorded 165 million XRP in net selling, July posted 197 million, October reached 382 million, and January came in at 370 million. In total, net selling hit 3.3 billion XRP, worth about $5 billion.

Only one week out of 46 showed positive net flow. Dom pointed out that this pressure did not match what happened on Binance.

Notably, on the XRP/USDT pair on Binance, sell pressure was 2-5x lighter. In June, Binance even showed a net positive flow while Upbit recorded 218 million XRP in net selling. The hourly correlation between the two exchanges stood at just 0.37, which suggests Upbit followed its own path.

Discount Turns Into Premium

Also, from April to September, XRP on Upbit traded at a 3% to 6% discount compared to Binance. This means sellers accepted prices up to 6% worse than global markets for months. 

Dom suggested that these sellers seemed focused on getting KRW rather than chasing better prices. They may have needed local currency, faced rules limiting where they could trade, or simply decided to take profits.

Interestingly, on Oct. 10, Korean retail traders pushed the premium from negative 0.07% to positive 2.4% in just one day. Trading activity jumped five times to 832,000 trades. After that, the premium only briefly turned negative again. At the same time, the daily selling pace doubled from 6.3 million XRP per day to 11.2 million XRP per day.

Further, Dom also grouped daily flows based on how XRP performed on Binance. On crash days, when XRP fell more than 5%, Upbit showed average net selling of 46 million XRP with a 1.49 sell-to-buy ratio. On normal down days, average net selling reached 22 million XRP. 

Meanwhile, flat days still showed 6 million XRP in net selling. When XRP rose between 2% and 5%, Upbit posted average net buying of 4 million XRP with a 0.94 ratio. On days when XRP gained more than 5%, net buying averaged 8 million XRP with a 0.93 ratio.

This means Korean retail traders bought during strong rallies, while sharp drops brought much heavier selling. Dom noted that crash days showed sell intensity 8x heavier than normal. The steady seller and retail reactions fed into each other, with retail buying rallies and the automated flow selling into the demand.

Machine and Retail Behaviors

Notably, the largest sell days show how big this flow became. On Feb. 5, 2026, Upbit recorded 147 million XRP in net selling across 1 million trades. 

July 23 saw 87 million XRP in net selling, Oct. 10 recorded 75 million, Jan. 31 logged 53 million, and Aug. 14 posted 51 million. The most extreme reading happened on Oct. 7, when the sell-to-buy ratio reached 2.08, meaning the market sold 2 XRP for every 1 XRP bought.

Dom said the bot behavior barely changed over 10 months. Between 57% and 60% of trades happened within 10 milliseconds. Orders kept appearing in round numbers such as 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000 XRP. The system ran 24 hours a day without weekday or weekend breaks, and buying never outweighed selling overall at any hour.

On the other side, the buyers had a different behavior. Notably, about 28% of buy trades came in small fractional sizes like 2.535, 3.679, and 2.681 XRP, which match KRW-based retail orders such as buying 10,000 won worth of XRP. Over 10 months, buyers placed 10 million of these fractional orders. 

Essentially, one side of the pattern looked like mechanical trades, while the other looked like it was handled by everyday retail traders.

Who is Behind These Flows?

Notably, Dom pointed out that Korean capital controls limit easy access to global exchanges, which often causes Upbit to trade at a premium to Binance. 

Sellers can collect a 2% to 3% spread on top of spot prices in that setup. Dom calculated that 3.3 billion XRP equals 5.4% of XRP’s total circulating supply, all net sold through a single trading pair on one exchange in 10 months. He also noted that net sold simply means the tokens changed hands.

Considering all this, he asked: Who can sell 300 million to 400 million XRP every month for nearly a year, ignore discounts of up to 6%, run identical algorithms nonstop, and specifically need KRW? He did not present a firm answer, suggesting it could possibly involve one large entity, dozens of traders, or even thousands.

15) So who has enough XRP to sell 300-400M per month for a year straight, doesn’t care about 6% discounts, runs identical algo infrastructure 24/7 and needs KRW specifically or is in some walled garden and can only use Upbit?

AND who are they selling to? Who’s been on the other…

— Dom (@traderview2) February 16, 2026

Meanwhile, some proponents believe the flow could come from On-Demand Liquidity use, where a Ripple partner handles mostly one-way remittances into Korea. If money flows mainly into the country from places like Southeast Asia, Japan, or the United States, the result would involve steady net selling of XRP into KRW on Upbit.