Survey: 31% of South Korean Employees Invest in Crypto

If you know how hot South Koreans are for crypto, this may not come as much of a surprise. According to a new survey, 3 out of every 10 South Korean workers have some investment experience with cryptocurrencies.

Nearly 1 in 3 Invested in Cryptocurrency

This Wednesday, web-based job portal Saramin published the results of a survey that included 941 salaried South Korean citizens. Saramin found that 31.3% of respondents held a position in cryptocurrency.

Revealing their reasons for investing in crypto, 54.2% of the individuals surveyed believed that these investments were the fastest way to make money, and 47.8% indicated that investing small amounts of money into cryptocurrency was easy enough to justify the decision.

According to the data, 44.1% of surveyed workers have invested less than 1 million won (US$930). Some 18.3% have invested 1 to 2 million won, while another 9.8% invested between 2 and 4 million won. 7.8% indicated that they’d invested anywhere from 4 to 6 million won, and 12.9% have invested over 10 million won. The survey detailed the average investment as 5.66 million won (US$5,264).

The survey also noted the success rates of its respondents. 80.3% of those surveyed recorded a profitable return on their investment. Only 6.4% indicated that they were down on their initial investment, while 13.2% said they’d seen neither substantial losses nor gains from their starting positions.

Survey Confirms Koreans’ Love for Crypto

This survey confirms what most of us in the crypto community already knew: South Koreans are crazy for cryptocurrency.

For example, South Koreans are notorious for collectively pumping and investing in coins like Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic. Korean traders investing through Bithumb are often blamed for the massive price pump of Bitcoin Cash back in November.

The South Korean government has taken regulatory measures in an effort to curb overzealous investment practices and protect its citizens from the market’s volatility. In the past month alone, it’s banned Bitcoin futures contracts, set mandatory guidelines for exchanges, and proposed legislation to tackle non-accredited investing. The last of these efforts looked specifically to quell interest in crypto among adolescent Koreans, a demographic that is especially interested in cryptocurrency as an investment and blockchain as a technological innovation.

The laundry list of legislation is meant “to prevent a general public without expertise from suffering losses by participating in virtual currency investments that have massive fluctuations.” We don’t know if these regulations will keep people from losing money, but given the results of the recent survey, they certainly aren’t stopping them from trying to make some.