Cryptocurrency investors in South Korea, Singapore and Japan were the biggest users of the now bankrupt FTX.com exchange based on the number of monthly unique visitors from January to October 2022, according to a report by crypto pricing and analytics service CoinGecko.
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Fast facts
- The three Asian countries had a combined 15.7% of FTX’s total traffic in the period, with South Korea having the highest 6.1% representing 297,229 unique monthly users, CoinGecko data shows.
- South Korean financial authorities have recently launched an investigation on self-issued cryptocurrencies from local exchanges, as they view FTX’s demise to be linked to its FTT native utility token, according to local media reports.
- Singapore was the runner-up with 241,675 monthly average unique users or 5% of the traffic on FTX.com. Japan was third with 4.6% making up 223,513 monthly users.
- After the Binance crypto exchange pulled out of Singapore last year, many crypto investors moved to FTX, which may explain the city-state’s high ranking on the list, CoinGecko said.
- In Japan, FTX bought out the struggling Liquid Group exchange in April this year, which included subsidiaries in Singapore. Japan’s investment giant SoftBank also figured prominently as an investor in FTX, sinking about US$100 million into the operation, an amount SoftBank has now written off.
- FTX, once the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Nov. 11 after it emerged much of the collateral at its brokerage arm was based on its FTT token and amid reports it had used customer funds for trading.
- The trading platform’s native utility token FTT has fallen more than 94% from US$22 on Nov. 8 to its current price of around US$1.26, according to CoinGecko.
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