South Korea recovers from martial law and XRP, BTC flash crashes

Assets listed on South Korean exchanges, including cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC) and XRP, tanked on Tuesday night after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law for the first time since 1979.

Traditional assets like equities, along with the Korean won (KRW), also cratered as tanks rolled down the streets of Seoul to protect government buildings.

As the KRW crashed to its weakest exchange rate against the dollar in 15 years, Seoul-based crypto exchanges Upbit and Bithumb struggled to remain operational. Outages affected users intermittently throughout the evening.

Trading volumes in BTC and XRP surged as prices collapsed, sending BTC tumbling 33% intraday on Upbit’s KRW-denominated trading pair.

XRP, the most popular asset traded on Upbit and Bithumb this week, fell an almost unbelievable 56% within 30 minutes on KRW pairs.

One-minute chart of BTC/KRW on Upbit.

Read more: XRP craze in South Korea reminds traders of LUNA meltdown

A chaotic day for South Korean crypto traders

President Yoon’s order suspended all political activities for approximately three hours until opposition lawmakers raced into an emergency parliamentary session to vote on a lift of martial law.

After some clashes between police and protesters outside the National Assembly building, the finance ministry pledged “unlimited liquidity” to the market, leading the KRW and other Korean assets to pare their losses.

Samsung, the multi-hundred-billion-dollar electronics giant, fell by over 7% in London trading before regaining confidence after the finance ministry’s commitment. The KRW, which had traded nearly 3% lower in FX markets abroad, recouped half of those losses.

South Korea’s constitution demands the president comply with a National Assembly vote to lift martial law. According to a translated excerpt of the constitution, “When the National Assembly requests the lifting of martial law with the concurrent vote of a majority of the total members of the National Assembly, the President shall comply.”

Nevertheless, it’s unclear if President Yoon will actually follow the constitution.

During the late-night session, 190 parliamentarians voted unanimously to lift martial law. As of 1pm in New York (3am in Seoul), however, Yoon and his military hadn’t responded to the vote.

Globally, the price of BTC is relatively unchanged over the last 24 hours. The smaller XRP is still trading 6% lower in global averages.

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