South Korean stocks plunge sparks 'JOMO' sentiment: investors shift from fear of missing out to relief at staying out of the market

Trade.xyz released an announcement regarding the SK Hynix contract price pinning incident: At 07:01 on July 28, the marked price of SK Hynix tokens plummeted from $1,127.9 to $917.25, triggering abnormal forced liquidations of a large number of long positions. This price originated from an actual executed transaction captured by multiple independent data providers, with the external venue being a major pre-market in South Korea. Accordingly, Trade.xyz decided to cover all liquidation losses caused by this price anomaly on a one-time, discretionary basis. Today, market commentators joked: "Trade.xyz really bailed out all the longs, haha—refunded them at the pin price, and then 20 hours later the price slowly crept back toward that level." Meanwhile, South Korea’s KOSPI index once fell more than 12% today, and the KOSDAQ index dropped over 8%, triggering circuit breakers on both markets for the first time in history. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have plummeted for two consecutive days, with a combined market capitalization evaporation of about 530 trillion won: Samsung’s market value shrank by 257 trillion won, and SK Hynix’s by 273 trillion won. SK Hynix once fell more than 17%, marking its largest single-day percentage drop in history.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, a wallet address linked to institutional firm Selini Capital deposited 495,473 HYPE tokens into OKX over the past hour, worth approximately $26.8 million, which may indicate the institution’s intention to sell HYPE.

Institutions are dumping $HYPE! A wallet linked to #SeliniCapital deposited 495,473 $HYPE ($26.8M) into #OKX over the past hour.

The A-share storage chip sector rallied in the mid-afternoon, with stocks including Tongfu Microelectronics and GigaDevice narrowing their declines. Torrence surged over 16%, C-Changxin rose more than 6.5%, and Surpass Technology gained over 10%. The Shenzhen Component Index climbed more than 1% in the afternoon, the ChiNext Index advanced 1.04%, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.23%, and over 4,000 stocks across the two bourses traded higher.

Bithumb will list RLUSD and AEON on its KRW trading pair market.

SK Hynix’s American Depositary Receipts (ADRs, ticker: SKHY) listed on the U.S. Nasdaq have launched a conversion mechanism with the company’s Korean domestic shares. Starting today, investors can convert ADRs to Korean shares or vice versa, subject to certain regulatory restrictions, offering global investors more flexible cross-border trading access. The move follows SK Hynix’s completion of its roughly $26.5 billion ADR issuance and listing in early July, further enhancing the stock’s global liquidity. Each ADR represents one-tenth of a Korean share; the U.S.-traded ADR currently still trades at a premium. It should be noted that actual conversion cannot be completed on the same day, as it requires procedures involving the depositary bank (Citibank), foreign exchange declaration, and administrative processes, typically taking several business days. Applications are primarily submitted via securities brokers to the Korea Securities Depository (KSD) and the depositary bank, while trade execution and arbitrage effectiveness are subject to the trading sessions of Korean and U.S. stocks (Korean shares trade during daytime hours, while U.S. shares trade at night).