At GOPAX, a domestic virtual asset exchange, the Block Street (BSB) token, which is supported for transactions, surged from the 100-won range to as high as 4 million won before plunging. Some said the surge in Tether (USDT) on Bithumb in Oct. last year has been repeated.
According to the virtual asset industry on the 26th, BSB suddenly jumped from around 170 won to 3,997,000 won at about 7:23 p.m. the previous day. Two minutes later, it plunged back to the 100-won range. A GOPAX official said, "BSB has a small circulating supply, so a relatively large amount of funds flowed in and pushed up the price. It also seems to have been affected by the listing of BSB perpetual futures on Binance Holdings Ltd. the previous day."
BSB began transaction support on GOPAX at 3 p.m. on the 25th, and Binance Holdings Ltd. listed "BSBUSDT" perpetual futures (Perpetual Futures, a futures contract with no expiration date) at 8:45 p.m. the same day. BSBUSDT supports up to 10x leverage, and Tether (USDT), which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, is used as margin.
The market says GOPAX's sharp rise and fall in BSB is identical to Bithumb's Tether incident in Oct. last year. Tether is a virtual asset pegged to the U.S. dollar, and on Bithumb its price briefly surged more than 300% from the 1,400-won range to 5,755 won. At the time, the Tether price was found to have spiked abnormally as automatic forced liquidations cascaded amid defects in Bithumb's leveraged lending product "Landing Plus" and a lack of liquidity.
A GOPAX official said, "This sharp rise and fall in BSB occurred because the exchange's own transaction volume is small and BSB's order book is thin, so it is not the same phenomenon as Bithumb's Tether case."