Aztec (AZTEC) surged about 82% in 24 hours to around $0.035 after South Korean exchanges Upbit and Bithumb both decided to list the token with local currency pairs, sparking a wave of KRW-denominated buying in a thinly traded market.
Korean listings are still important because they transform a token from a crypto-only token into something that a huge retail base can purchase directly with local currency.
South Korea consistently ranks among the top three countries in crypto trading volume relative to population, and Upbit alone regularly matches or exceeds Coinbase in daily spot turnover during active sessions.
A KRW pair removes the extra hop via USDT, connects to Korea’s unusually active spot trading culture, and puts the token on screens that people in the region actually watch. And this type of exposure can be transformative for small-cap tokens like AZTEC.
Traders often treat Upbit and Bithumb new listings as dynamic events, rushing in before liquidity deepens and before the initial premium disappears. The pattern repeated itself many times: tokens like VIRTUAL printed double-digit moves only on Korean listing announcements, regardless of what the underlying project was doing at the time.
In thin books, this dynamic creates the kind of vertical candle printed in AZTEC. Once prices deviate locally, arbitrageurs step in, buying in global markets and selling into the Korean supply, which helps drive up prices across the board. The “kimchi premium” – the persistent gap between Korean and international prices – tends to widen sharply during these episodes before narrowing as the arbitrage flow catches up.
Aztec itself is billed as an Ethereum-based, privacy-focused Layer 2 that uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable encrypted transactions on a public chain. This gives the token a narrative beyond the listing event.
The premium narrowed slightly in the evening session in Asia as arbitrage flow caught up and the upside showed signs of exhaustion.
