2017 Bitcoin's 19x run and the kimchi premium

Bitcoin started 2017 at $1,000 and peaked near $19,000 in December. In Korea the year also brought the kimchi premium, a chip boom and the first round of property and crypto regulation.

From $1,000 to $19,000

Bitcoin started 2017 around $1,000 and reached about $19,000 by mid-December, roughly 19 times in a year. Korean exchanges traded tens of percent above global prices, a gap called the "kimchi premium", and coins dominated lunch conversation. Exchange servers kept crashing under the traffic, ICOs raised money by issuing new coins, and altcoins rose tenfold or more and then fell just as hard.

Chips, biotech and property rules

Stocks ran too. Data centers and smartphones drove a memory chip supercycle: Samsung Electronics rose more than 50% by November, setting new highs along the way, and SK hynix rose with it. The KOSPI broke out of its multi-year box and reached 2,500. Biotech had its own boom, and Celltrion more than doubled in the year. In property, the new government's August 2 measures designated overheated speculation zones and tightened lending, the first of several years of regulation.

The 2018 crash

It ended fast. By early February 2018 Bitcoin was about a third of its December peak, around $6,900, and by December 2018 it was down 84%. In Korea, a government remark that it was considering shutting down exchanges sent prices plunging, and every regulatory headline after that moved the market. Bitcoin did not pass its 2017 peak again until December 2020, three years later.