Stablecoin transactions exceeded $60 billion this year due to a sharp drop in the won price and regulations on the domestic coin market.

Since the emergency martial law crisis, an average of about $700 million (KRW 1.19 trillion) has been traded per day, increasing to 5% of the average daily spot exchange transaction amount of domestic banks.

Transactions via domestic stablecoins have topped $60 billion this year amid a steep decline in the won’s value and tighter regulations on the domestic cryptocurrency market.

Daily trading has averaged around $700 million (1.19 trillion won) since the economic martial law was declared, rising to about 5 percent of the average daily spot exchange transactions handled by domestic banks. Demand appears to be surging to invest in the rapidly appreciating dollar.

According to data from virtual asset analysis company CryptoQuant on Monday, the value of stablecoin transactions on Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax — Korea’s top five cryptocurrency exchanges — reached $60.21 billion as of the 26th of this year. This is the sum of the purchase and sale transactions of stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), and amounts to over 88 trillion won.

The increase in investment in stablecoins, which do not generate any market gains, is likely to be driven by efforts to transfer funds to overseas cryptocurrency exchanges and to invest abroad. There is also thought to be demand for transferring the coins to a personal wallet.

The outflow of funds is attributed to the financial authorities’ excessive regulations, which have severely limited the autonomy of domestic exchanges in listing new coins. Derivative trading remains banned on domestic exchanges, and funds are quickly flowing out amid the recent instability in the domestic political landscape. As a result, demand for stablecoins is seen as posing a new risk in the foreign exchange market, such as by driving up demand for dollars.

Demand for stablecoins in Korea has been on the rise since the economic martial law was declared on the 3rd. The volume of stablecoin transactions, which averaged $430.54 million per day last month, jumped to $673.28 million (around 989.72 billion won) following the declaration.