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South Korean retail investors dumped Tesla shares in the past four months, shifting their attention to crypto stocks amid growing disillusionment with Elon Musk’s electric car manufacturer.
That’s according to a Sept. 1 report by Bloomberg, which says investors sold a net $657 million of Tesla stock last month and $1.8 billion in the past four. That was the largest outflow for Tesla stock since at least 2019, the report added.
That’s despite Tesla shares pumping more than 10% in the last month, according to Google Finance.
Korean Investors Turn To Crypto
South Korean retail traders were one of Tesla’s most loyal investor bases, and helped fuel the stock’s rallies in the past, the report said.
But they’ve turned now to the crypto sector, including Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies, which sucked in around $253 million from Korean investors in August.
The company is currently the largest corporate holder of ETH. According to StrategicETHReserve, the firm has around 1.8 million ETH on its balance sheet that is worth approximately $7.94 billion.
Top 10 ETH treasury companies (Source: StrategicETHReserve)
That’s more than double the holdings of the next biggest ETH treasury firm, SharpLink Gaming. With Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin as a Chairman, SharpLink currently holds 797.7K ETH worth $3.53 billion at current prices in its reserves.
Given BitMine’s substantial ETH holdings, the company is often seen as a leveraged proxy for the leading altcoin.
Over the past 24 hours, ETH’s price has dropped 0.28% to trade at $4,441.45 as of 6:15 a.m. EST. During the same period, shares in BitMine (BMNR) have tumbled over 4%, according to data from Google Finance.
Both ETH and BMNR have extended their losses over the last week with the recent pullback. During the last 7-day period, Ethereum saw its price drop over 3%, while BMNR plummeted more than 16%.
BitMine is not the only crypto stock that is seeing inflows from the Korean retail market. An Aug. 27 report by 10X Research shows that investors in the region are also buying into US crypto exchange Coinbase and Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, USD Coin (USDC)..
“Korean investors are pouring billions into crypto stocks, reshaping global flows in ways Wall Street can no longer ignore,” the company said in its report.
“Korean investors are pouring billions into crypto stocks, reshaping global flows in ways Wall Street can no longer ignore,” @10x_Research noted in a recent report. “The push has been amplified by U.S. and Korean Stablecoin legislation, creating a powerful backdrop for this surge…
— 10x Research (@10x_Research) August 31, 2025
“The push has been amplified by U.S. and Korean Stablecoin legislation, creating a powerful backdrop for this surge in capital,” 10X Research added.
Even with crypto equities’ prices dropping, which the firm said is due to the US Federal Reserve delaying interest rate cuts, the demand for these stocks from the Korean retail market has not been dampened.
Number Of South Korean Investors That Have More Than $750K Invested In Crypto Surpasses 10K
Amid the outflows from tech stocks like Tesla, there has been an uptick in the number of South Korean investors that holds over $750,000 in crypto.
On Aug. 25, the Korea Times reported that the number of South Korean investors that hold that amount in digital assets on domestic exchanges surpassed 10,000. Most of the investors are in their 50s, but investors in their 20s have the highest average holdings, the report added.
The average crypto holdings of those investors was also 217 times greater than the average amount of Korean won held on five major crypto exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and GOPAX.
Combined, these exchanges had more than 10 million people using their platforms as of Aug. 5.
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