Crypto researcher Dom (@traderview2) says he’s uncovered what appears to be a persistent algorithmic seller of XRP on South Korea’s Upbit — a flow large enough to reshape how traders interpret XRP activity out of Korea. Using tick-level trade data, Dom analyzed roughly 82 million trades on Upbit’s XRP/KRW pair (and 444 million trades from Binance for comparison). He concludes a single, machine-driven selling pipeline has been running almost continuously for about 10 months, offloading an estimated 3.3 billion XRP (~$5 billion) into Upbit’s order book. What he found - Persistent one-way selling: Upbit’s XRP/KRW has been net negative every month for 10 months. Select monthly net sells Dom highlights: Apr -165M XRP, Jul -197M, Oct -382M, Jan -370M. Overall tally: ~3.3 billion XRP (~$5B). - Continuous, algorithmic fingerprints: roughly 57–61% of sell trades execute within 10 ms, many in round-number sizes (10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 XRP). Dom reports one automated process running 17 hours straight with only a 33-second pause. - Retail-style buying on the other side: buy orders often show tiny fractional sizes (for example 2.535, 3.679 XRP), consistent with KRW-denominated retail purchases (buying a fixed won amount). - Venue-specific behavior: Binance’s XRP/USDT showed materially less sell pressure over the same windows — Dom says 2–5x less — and the hourly flow correlation between the two venues is only about 0.37, suggesting Upbit’s selling is driven by local factors rather than simply mirroring global risk-on/risk-off moves. Price dynamics and the “reverse Kimchi” effect From April through September, Upbit’s XRP traded about 3–6% below Binance — a “reverse Kimchi discount” (the usual Korean premium flipped negative). Dom sees that as notable because it implies the seller accepted consistently worse execution than available elsewhere, which could suggest a mandate to obtain KRW, restricted routing to Upbit, or Korean holders realizing gains on-chain. Around Oct. 10 there was a structural shift: the Korean premium flipped from roughly -0.07% to +2.4% in a single day and trade volumes jumped fivefold to 832,000 trades. The automated selling did not slow — daily sell volume roughly doubled from -6.3M XRP/day to -11.2M/day after the flip. Behavioral feedback loop Dom buckets days by how XRP performed on Binance and finds Upbit flow skews heavily negative on down days, and especially on crash days, where sell intensity can be eight times heavier. He frames the dynamic as an amplifying feedback loop: a systematic seller continuously hits the market while Korean retail buys rips and accumulates on rallies, intensifying volatility when panic sells happen. Scale and unanswered questions The scale is striking: 3.3 billion XRP is about 5.4% of XRP’s circulating supply, executed through a single pair on a single exchange over 10 months. Dom stresses his findings come from trade-level forensic work — bot fingerprinting, iceberg detection, and wash-trade checks — but he stops short of naming who’s behind the selling. His open questions: who can sustain 300–400M XRP per month for a year, consistently accept ~6% worse fills than global markets, and specifically needs KRW or is effectively limited to using Upbit? Market context If Dom’s analysis holds, it reframes the Upbit XRP flow as a venue-specific execution phenomenon rather than merely reflecting global positioning. That has implications for how traders interpret price discovery and cross-market arbitrage around XRP. At press time, XRP traded at $1.45. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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