In Aug 2025, Tesla saw ~$0.6B in net selling, the largest outflow since 2024. For Korean retail investors (long-time Tesla bulls) this marks a rare shift.
Q: Where did the money go?
A: Toward crypto stocks.
The first is Circle. Circle has gained tremendous popularity in Korea, and this coincided with the country’s stablecoin boom.
The recently inaugurated Korean president, Lee Jae-myung, has strongly supported stablecoin policies, driving a flood of Korean investors into stablecoin-related stocks. Circle became one of the biggest beneficiaries of this trend.
Since June, the initial overheated sentiment has gradually cooled, and the pace of buying has slowed. However, buying has still outweighed selling, showing that Korean investors’ interest continues to persist.
The second is Bitmine. In July, Bitmine experienced a simultaneous surge in both trading volume and stock price.
Its quarterly revenue grew 67% compared to the previous quarter, and the company strengthened its long-term holding strategy by purchasing about 154 BTC. On top of that came news of a $250M private funding round and the addition of Fundstrat’s Tom Lee to its board, which further attracted investors’ attention. Bitmine also holds around 1.86M ETH—about 1.5–1.6% of total supply—establishing itself as an “Ethereum treasury play.”
As ETH prices skyrocketed throughout July, Korean investors naturally turned to ETH-related equities. Bitmine’s stock, in particular, soared as much as 31x during the month before settling at around 10x, vastly outpacing ETH’s own price rally.
This became a magnet for countless Korean investors, underscoring the deeply speculative character of their behavior.
What stands out is that prior to July 2025, Bitmine had not even ranked within the top 50 net-buy stocks among Korean investors. Yet within just a single quarter, it managed to concentrate investor attention and spark an explosive rally.
This phenomenon illustrates that Korean retail investors are moving away from their traditional growth-stock-centered investment patterns. Though still in its early stages, if capital inflows into crypto-related stocks continue alongside institutional progress, their presence in the market is expected to grow.
This trend goes beyond simple theme-chasing and should be interpreted as a signal of structural change under evolving regulatory and institutional environments. While crypto stocks cannot yet be considered a fully established asset class, sustained investor interest could allow them to emerge as a new investment pillar.
