$BTC It is less volatile than the Korean stock market. Since the beginning of June, South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI has more than doubled, averaging 3.8% per day. $BTCis 1.7%.
On Thursday alone, South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI fell 6.4% to 6,820, renewing for the third time its 37th program trading suspension in 2026, a regulatory five-minute suspension to restore order to a chaotic market.
But this crash wasn’t even the worst session of the week.
meanwhile, $BTC In comparison, crypto indexes appear to be sailing on calm waters. On a 12-month basis, KOSPI’s annualized volatility increased to 57% year-over-year. $BTC47% — still higher $BTC over this impressive period.
One analyst said, “Compared to KOSPI, $BTC It is an asset with low volatility. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics exhibited volatility of 90% and 78%, respectively, extreme levels previously observed only in theme stocks. ”
Investors have included SK Hynix and Samsung in the recent AI stock frenzy. Both companies make hardware related to the AI chatbot boom and coding tools such as Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok.
Remarkably, despite the steep decline in recent days, KOSPI is the best-performing stock market in major economies in 2026, still up around 60% despite losing a quarter of its valuation since June.
KOSPI rose from 3,033 to 9,386, returning to a bear market within 11 months. There have been seven circuit breaker outages so far this year, more than in 2008.
Memory shortage is real in the short to medium term, with Samsung $SSNLF and SK Hynix $SKHY at the center of it, and the index could rise… pic.twitter.com/L9PDGms47W
— Inferam (@InferamAI) July 16, 2026
Seven circuit breakers across markets this year
KOSPI set a record closing price of 9,114.55 on June 22nd. The next day, it fell 9.99%, one of the biggest single-day declines in the index’s history.
Monday was just as brutal. The 8.95% plunge above the 7,000 level triggered the seventh 20-minute market-wide circuit breaker of 2026.
A market-wide circuit breaker halts all trading in listed stocks for 20 minutes after the 8% decline. The more common program trading halt, also known as a sidecar, suspends only specific program orders after a futures spike.
By Wednesday, the machine was working in the opposite direction. The index rebounded 6.24% to 7,284.41. Most of it was then taken back on Thursday.
The Bank of Korea didn’t help, raising interest rates by 25 basis points to 2.75%, the first rate hike since January 2023.
All the while, $BTC Since the beginning of June, it has been trading relatively calmly in the $60,000 range.
Stock YouTuber stabbed in South Korea during stock market crash
Two AI stocks overtake South Korean stock market
South Korea’s index has structural problems in its calculation.
Two companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are worth half of KOSPI’s market value. Additionally, exposure to these two companies is amplified by various funds, derivatives, and leveraged funds.
The timing was no coincidence. SK Hynix also joined the $1 trillion club in the same session, with KOSPI up 95% year-on-year.
Investors hungry for leverage to magnify their gains on the upswing called for a new “2X” single-stock ETF, and within weeks it became the centerpiece of the market.
These leveraged funds generated trading volume of 212 trillion won in June alone, more than a quarter of domestic ETF sales.
Next, leverage did what leverage always does: unwind. The combined assets of the two companies fell 41% from July 1st to July 13th, from 15.9 trillion won to 9.3 trillion won.
Bloomberg pointed out that the single Hong Kong-traded fund associated with SK Hynix has grown so large that it is wagging the dog’s tail, meaning it is more responsible for SK Hynix’s volatility than SK Hynix’s common stock itself.
“Fixing known policy errors”
In June 2025, the South Korean president promised on the Korea Exchange that he would make stock investment a major investment vehicle alongside real estate.
Individual investors are obligated to borrow money. A 24-year-old who turned just 10 million won into 300 million won in margin money told Reuters: “Just as it went up explosively, it went down explosively.”
According to data from the Korea Financial Investment Association, securities firms liquidated 1.12 trillion won of margin stocks in June, the highest monthly total ever.
The viral Bull Theory post contextualizes that 1.2 million “accounts” are under margin call, which equates to approximately 1 in 30 working-age adults. However, no regulatory authority publishes account analysis figures to accurately determine the number of individuals who have received margin calls.
The economic downturn has real-world effects.
Sadly, Protoss reported this week that a stock trading YouTuber was stabbed in Busan after the market crash.
Seven weeks after product approval, the Financial Services Commission on Thursday halted new listings of the 2X single-stock ETF until the market stabilizes, after the head of the financial watchdog acknowledged the rollout had been too hasty.
Additionally, starting August 5th, the minimum deposit amount has been tripled to 30 million won (approximately $20,300).
Inki Cho, a strategist at Exness, called the move “premature” and said: “This is a correction of a known policy error.”
$BTCOn the other hand, I did relatively little in the same stretch. The stock traded Thursday at around $64,000, about half below its October 2025 high of about $126,000.
The company’s CME Implied Volatility Index came within 3 points of its 12-month low last week.
