Upbit turned out to be the most widely used application in South Korea for stock or virtual currency transactions, with the number of access skyrocketing since the beginning of the year amid crypto investment frenzy.

According to local app and retail industry tracker WiseApp and Wise Retail on Wednesday, Upbit became the most popular stock or cryptocurrency exchange platform with the number of execution reaching 10.2 billion times from January to March.

The number of execution times to the platform surged from 200 million in October last year to 1.7 billion in January, 3.7 billion in February and 4.7 billion in March as more investors rush to join the crypto bandwagon. The number of users of the app also grew five times from 460,000 in October to 2.43 million in March.

Kiwoom Securities’ stock trading app came second with the number of times the app was executed reaching 3.7 billion. They are followed by Stockplus with 3.3 billion times, NH Investment & Securities’ Namuh 1.8 billion, Samsung Securities’ mPOP 1.6 billion, Bithumb 1.1 billion, Korea Investment & Securities 700 million and Investing.com 600 billion.

Stockplus, which came in third place, is a sister service of Upbit under Dunamu.

The total number of users of the nation’s top 10 stock and digital currency trading apps after removing duplicate user accounts amounted to 11.18 million in March.

By Lee Yong-ik and Choi Mira

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]