Spot Trading
Spot · Spot market · Cash market · Spot buying
Buying and selling the coin itself, so it is yours the moment the order fills; every trade on Korea's won exchanges is a spot trade.
Simple explanation
Background: As of early November 2026, Korea's won exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Digital X, formerly Korbit) offer spot trading only. Futures and other leveraged derivatives are not allowed there, so Koreans who trade futures do it on overseas platforms.
In a spot trade you buy or sell the coin itself. Spend ₩100 million (about $71,400) on one bitcoin and the coin is in your account the moment the order fills; sell it and the won arrives straight away. The coin is yours to hold as long as you like or to withdraw to another exchange or a personal wallet, subject to the usual conditions such as deposit and withdrawal status, the withdrawal network and the Travel Rule. "Spot" means the goods change hands now, unlike futures, which settle only the profit or loss on a later price.
You can buy only as much as your money pays for. With no borrowed money (no leverage), a falling price never forces a liquidation, and you can keep holding. The most you can lose is what you put in, though a coin that falls toward zero can take nearly all of it. There is no expiry and no funding payment, so holding costs little beyond the trading fee when you buy or sell and the withdrawal fee when you move the coin. The flip side is that you cannot profit from a falling price (go short); the most you can do is sell what you hold.
Futures behave very differently. A perpetual future on an overseas exchange never delivers a coin: you lock up margin, bet on the price going up or down, and settle the difference. Leverage lets the same money control a position several times larger, but a small move can then liquidate it, and you pay or receive funding while you hold. A futures position is a contract, not a coin, so it cannot be withdrawn to a wallet. One bitcoin bought spot and a one-bitcoin futures long carry entirely different risks and costs.
Bills to bring derivatives to Korean exchanges have been proposed and debated, but nothing has changed yet. The coin-lending services some Korean exchanges run let you borrow coins against collateral, which is not the same thing as futures. So Koreans who want futures go abroad, and that has limits: an overseas exchange that serves Korean users without registering with the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) breaks the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. The authorities have had such exchanges' apps blocked on app stores, and in October 2026 they also blocked access from Korea to the websites of 27 unregistered operators. A blocked site can make it harder to get your assets out, and overseas exchanges sit outside Korea's user-protection rules. This is general information, not legal advice; check the authorities' official notices for details.
Spot trading in Korea has some local traits. Almost all of it happens in won on KRW markets, though Upbit also runs BTC and USDT markets. Trading runs 24 hours a day, every day, and unlike Korean stocks there is no daily price limit, so a coin can move tens of percent in a day. Orders go onto the order book as limit or market orders and show up in your balance as soon as they fill. Exchanges sometimes block market orders or limit orders for a short time, for instance right after a new listing.
Overseas exchanges run a spot market and a futures market for the same coin, and the two prices differ slightly. The gap between the futures price and the spot price is the basis, and perpetual futures use funding payments to keep the futures price from drifting far from spot. The mark price that futures exchanges use for liquidations also starts from an index of spot prices on several exchanges. In the end, spot is the anchor for futures prices.
The kimchi premium compares Korean spot prices with overseas spot prices. With no futures at home, all Korean buying pressure flows into the spot market and pushes Korean spot prices up, which shows as the premium. If funding rates show how hot overseas futures are, the kimchi premium shows how hot the Korean spot market is. Kimchi premium arbitrage, too, means buying spot coins abroad and moving them to Korea to sell, since a futures position cannot be moved; futures only come in as a hedge against price moves while the coins travel.
The Korean prices on CoinGaja's tables are the KRW-market spot prices of Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Digital X, and the overseas price is Binance's spot USDT market price, not a futures price (1 USDT = $1). Coins Binance does not list use the first of OKX → Bybit → Bitget → Gate that trades them. The Kimchi Premium Calculator fills your amount through the Korean exchanges' and Binance's spot order books, and the Whale Trade Radar shows large spot fills on the four Korean exchanges' KRW markets.
Example
Buy 0.1 BTC spot at ₩100,000,000 (about $71,400) → you spend ₩10,000,000 (about $7,100), and the 0.1 BTC is in your account the moment the order fills (fees aside)
The price falls 20% to ₩80,000,000 → your coins are worth ₩8,000,000 (a paper loss of -₩2,000,000, about $1,400), and nothing forces you to sell
Put the same ₩10,000,000 up as margin for a 10x long on overseas futures (a ₩100,000,000 position, 1 BTC) → with an assumed 0.5% maintenance rate it is liquidated after a fall of about -9.5% (₩90,500,000), and most of the margin (₩9,500,000 or more) is gone
At the same -9.5%, the 0.1 BTC bought spot is worth 0.1 × 90,500,000 = ₩9,050,000 (-₩950,000), and you still hold it
Korean spot price ₩102,900,000, Binance spot $70,000 × KRW/USD ₩1,400 = ₩98,000,000 → kimchi premium +5.00% (spot against spot, not futures)
※ Example numbers, for illustration only
See it on CoinGaja
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