IOST in South Korea: how the won market really works

The short answer

If you are a Korean resident with a real-name bank account, the simplest way to buy IOST is on Upbit’s KRW-IOST market. It has traded since 25 July 2018 and is one of the two deepest IOST markets in the world, alongside Binance’s IOST/USDT book. Bithumb and Coinone also offer IOST/KRW, but with much less volume. There is no crypto tax on gains yet; a 22% tax is scheduled for 2027, though another delay is being debated.

Korea matters to IOST far beyond its borders. A Korean exchange operator holds the largest account on the IOST mainnet, Korean exchange notices move the global price, and IOST’s CEO has described Korea as the project’s second-largest market after Japan, with a community that has backed it since 2018. If you trade IOST anywhere, it pays to understand how the Korean market works.

Who regulates what

Korea splits the job between three bodies. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) sets policy. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) supervises and sanctions. The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) runs the reporting system for virtual asset service providers under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information (특금법). To offer won trading, an exchange must be reported to KoFIU and work with a bank that provides real-name accounts; that is why only five exchanges run KRW markets: Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax.

The second pillar is the Virtual Asset User Protection Act (가상자산이용자보호법), in force since 19 July 2024. It requires exchanges to segregate and safeguard customer assets, hold insurance or reserves, keep most coins in cold storage and police unfair trading. It is not a dead letter: Upbit cited the Act’s enforcement decree in its October 2026 notice about the IOST hard fork. An amended enforcement decree in August 2026 also tightened screening of exchanges’ finances, governance and major shareholders, according to Korean legal press.

Keep the layers apart. The law sets duties for exchanges, the regulators enforce them, and listing decisions sit with the exchanges themselves, coordinated through DAXA, their joint body. We found no ruling by a Korean regulator on IOST itself.

Korean exchanges that list IOST

Three of the five KRW exchanges list IOST. In practice, almost all Korean IOST trading happens on one of them.

The gap between Upbit and everyone else is large. In our market snapshot Upbit’s KRW book traded several times more than Bithumb and vastly more than Coinone, where the spread between buy and sell orders was wide enough to make small trades expensive. Upbit’s spread on KRW-IOST was among the tightest of any IOST market. That depth is why the live price you see quoted in won almost always comes from Upbit; the converter below shows the current KRW rate.

The Dunamu account and what it tells you

Look at the IOST rich list on the official explorer and the top entry is dunamuiost, an account of Dunamu, the company that operates Upbit. It holds roughly 30% of the IOST L1 supply. The top ten accounts together hold about 72%, and most of them are exchange custody accounts too.

This is often misread as a single whale. It is not. Coins in an exchange custody account belong, economically, to that exchange’s customers. What the number does show is how much IOST sits with Korean retail investors through one platform. It has practical consequences: Upbit’s notices on deposits, withdrawals or cautions affect a large share of the coin’s real holders at once, and Upbit’s participation in the IOST 3.0 airdrop decided how a big slice of the exchange pool was distributed. You can check the current balances yourself with our IOST explorer, and the tokenomics guide covers the full holder breakdown.

A caution is not a delisting!

DAXA, the 2025 caution and what it did not mean

DAXA (디지털자산거래소 공동협의체) is the joint body of Korea’s KRW exchanges. It can act on a coin in three escalating steps, and the difference between them is the single most misunderstood thing about IOST in Korea.

On 13 January 2025, DAXA issued a call for caution on IOST. The reasons were the planned move to a Layer 2 on BNB Chain and the tokenomics change, which created 21.32 billion new IOST, after governance votes passed on 24 November 2024 and 12 January 2025. This was the first, mildest step. IOST was not designated a warning asset and was not delisted. Upbit kept the KRW and BTC markets open, supported the airdrop and its market data shows no warning or caution flags on IOST. The price reaction was still sharp, which says more about the weight of Korean sentiment than about the notice itself.

It was not IOST’s first brush with Upbit’s caution system. On 18 November 2019 Upbit briefly designated IOST an investment-caution asset after node instability halted deposits and withdrawals. Deposits reopened the next day and the designation was to be lifted once the price stabilized. By contrast, DON from Donnie Finance, a Korea-based DeFi project on IOST whose token was airdropped to IOST holders in 2021, was later delisted from Upbit and is withdrawal-only. Our IOST 3.0 guide explains the supply change behind the 2025 notice.

1. Jul 2018KRW-IOST opens on Upbit25 July; BTC market follows on 26 November
2. Feb 2019Mainnet swapUpbit supports the move from ERC-20 to mainnet IOST
3. Nov 2019Brief caution designationNode instability halts deposits; reopened next day
4. Jan 2025DAXA call for cautionOver the IOST 3.0 supply change; no designation
5. Apr 2025Airdrop round 1First of 48 monthly payouts on 10 April
6. Dec 2025Deposits reopen after hackIOST among networks restored after Upbit’s Solana wallet breach
7. Oct 2026v4.0.0 hard forkDeposits and withdrawals paused 21–26 October; trading continued

Monthly airdrop payouts on Upbit

Upbit is one of the exchanges distributing the 852.8 million IOST exchange share of the IOST 3.0 airdrop. Eligibility was fixed by a snapshot on 15 March 2025 at 09:00 KST. Payouts come in 48 monthly rounds, unlike the six-monthly schedule of Japanese exchanges. The first round was paid on 10 April 2025, and the 19th on 21 October 2026.

The formula Upbit published is simple in shape: the exchange pool, multiplied by Upbit’s share of all exchange-held IOST at the snapshot, multiplied by your share of Upbit’s IOST. Here is a purely illustrative example. If Upbit’s share of exchange-held IOST were 40% and you held 0.001% of Upbit’s IOST, your total allocation would be 852.8M × 0.40 × 0.00001, about 3,411 IOST, spread over 48 months, or roughly 71 IOST a round. Your real numbers will differ; the point is that it is a slow trickle, not a windfall. Anyone asking you to connect a wallet to "claim" an Upbit airdrop is running a scam. See our airdrop guide for the wallet-side claim.

A retail market, through and through

Korean IOST trading is overwhelmingly retail and mobile. That is why exchange notices, app banners and community chat rooms have such an outsized effect on the KRW price.

How Koreans buy IOST

1. Open an Upbit account

   Complete real-name verification and link a K Bank account in your own name. This is effectively limited to residents with Korean identification.

2. Deposit won

   Transfer KRW from your linked K Bank account. Upbit does not charge for KRW deposits; KRW withdrawals cost ₩1,000.

3. Buy KRW-IOST

   Use a limit order on the KRW market. Upbit’s KRW trading fee is reported at 0.05%; check the in-app fee page.

4. Keep it or withdraw it

   Holding on Upbit keeps you in the monthly airdrop rounds. To self-custody, withdraw on the IOST mainnet with the correct memo to an L1 wallet.

Upbit itself has a mixed safety record you should know about. It lost 342,000 ETH from a hot wallet in November 2019 and suffered a Solana-network hot-wallet breach in November 2025, covering customer losses from its own funds both times. KoFIU has also sanctioned Dunamu over know-your-customer and AML failures. None of this involved IOST directly, but our Upbit review sets it out in full.

How crypto is taxed in Korea

For now, individuals pay no tax on crypto trading gains. The law already provides for one: gains would be classed as other income (기타소득) and taxed at 22%, including local tax, on annual net gains above ₩2.5 million. The start date has been pushed back repeatedly, from 2022 to 2023, to 2025 and then to 1 January 2027. The finance minister has said taxation will go ahead in 2027, but in August 2026 a People Power Party lawmaker filed a bill to defer it to 2030, and a separate bill would abolish it altogether.

Our honest summary: scheduled for 2027, but another deferral is being debated. Whatever happens, keep records of your purchase prices and airdrop receipts from now on, because cost basis will matter once the tax applies. This is general information, not tax advice; consult a Korean tax professional for your situation.

Can’t open a real-name KRW account?

Some foreigners in Korea buy crypto with a card, then move it to an exchange that lists IOST and accepts residents of Korea. Check that the coin you need is available for Korea first.

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Is IOST linked to Kakao?

"IOST 카카오" is a common Korean search, so here is a direct answer: we found no partnership between IOST and Kakao, Klaytn or Kaia, the network Klaytn became. We found no IOST announcement of one, and nothing in the project’s Korean interviews mentions it. Our guess is that the search comes from KakaoTalk open-chat rooms where Korean investors discuss coins, or from confusion with other altcoins listed on the same exchanges; that is a guess, not a sourced fact. If someone in a chat room promises a Kakao deal for IOST, treat it as a rumor until IOST itself announces it. Our safety guide covers the common IOST scams.

Foreigners, global exchanges and CEX.IO

Korea’s KRW market is built for residents with Korean real-name accounts, and most foreigners cannot open one at Upbit. Binance.com does not serve Korea either; its Korean connection runs through Gopax, which does not list IOST. That leaves foreigners living in Korea with fewer options than Korean nationals.

One route some take is to buy crypto with a card on a global platform and send it to an exchange that lists IOST and accepts Korean residents. CEX.IO, an exchange running since 2013, is one such card on-ramp: it sells crypto such as BNB with cards, Apple Pay or Google Pay in USD, EUR or GBP. It does not list IOST, it is not a Korean-reported VASP, Korean users contract with its Nevis entity, CEX OVRS LLC, and its help center says some coins are not available to users from South Korea. If you can use Upbit, Upbit is simpler.

To compare Korea with its neighbors, read our Japan guide, where IOST has more regulated listings but much thinner books, or go back to the IOST in Asia hub.