Among cryptocurrency exchanges around the world, the one with the largest volume of transactions is based in South Korea, showed data from tallying website CoinMarketCap.

As of 10:40 a.m. Thursday, the transaction volume for 24 hours at Upbit based in South Korea reached $7.577 billion, far ahead of Hong Kong’s Binance, which ranked second.

Except for the No. 1 and No. 3 spots, most exchanges with large transactions were located in Hong Kong and China.

Although Upbit topped the world market in terms of trade volume, its size of bitcoin transactions fell to third place at $827.8 million, trailing Bitfinance at $1.482 billion and Okex at $935.1 million.

This means that traders in Korea, as there are fewer coins in circulation, tend to invest more on altcoins or alternative coins (cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin) that have higher potential of sudden rises. (khnews@heraldcorp.com)