South Korean Crypto Exchange Staff Bill ‘Outstrips Commercial Banks’
Some South Korean crypto exchange workers are getting paid more than staff in some of the nation’s top commercial banks, new data shows.
Per News1, average salaries have “more than doubled” year-on-year at the Upbit exchange. The platform’s operator has also paid out over $2.4 million worth of bonuses to its CEO in the first half of the financial year.
The media outlet credited the crypto market “boom” in the first quarter of FY2024 for the uptick in staff payouts and salaries.
Experts think that a bull market sparked by the launch of the Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States helped bolster profits at domestic exchanges.
As such, the outlet wrote, “pay for both executives and other employees” at Upbit operator Dunamu “increased significantly.”
The data was compiled by the regulatory Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and made public on August 18.
It shows that, on average, Dunamu paid its 601 employees the equivalent of just over $99,000 per year each in the first half of this year.
This figure is a “2.2-fold increase from the 59.44 million won [$44,000] recorded in the first half of last year,” News1 wrote.
Most of the rise appears to have come in the form of performance-based bonus payments, the data suggests.
This pay rate “exceeds the average annual salary of employees” at South Korea’s four biggest banks Kookmin Bank (KB), Shinhan Bank, KEB Hana Bank, and Woori Bank in FY2023.
These banks posted average salaries of under $86,000 in the past financial year.
And Upbit’s rising staff payments are evidence of the exchange’s rise in profitability over the course of the bull run.
The bull run saw the return of the so-called “ant” (retail) investors to South Korean crypto markets.
The nation’s markets are
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