AZTEC jumps 82% after dual KRW listings on Upbit and Bithumb

Aztec’s AZTEC token jumped about 82% in 24 hours to around $0.035 after South Korea’s two biggest spot exchanges added won trading pairs.

The move pushed AZTEC to fresh highs in its first full week of broad exchange trading. Volumes rose sharply as the token shifted from mostly crypto-quoted markets to direct KRW access.

The price gap between Korean venues and offshore markets briefly widened during the initial rush, then narrowed as arbitrage traders moved in.

Dual KEW listings reprice AZTEC within hours

Upbit added AZTEC trading in KRW, BTC, and USDT markets. Bithumb listed an AZTEC/KRW pair.

Both venues set trading to begin around the same time on Friday in Korea. New listings on either exchange can drive abrupt moves in smaller tokens. A dual listing compresses that timeline into a single event.

AZTEC’s jump played out fast, with the token briefly trading near $0.038 before settling back toward the mid-$0.03 range.

KRW demand hits while AZTEC liquidity is still forming

AZTEC is still early in its life as a transferable token. Before the Korean listings, AZTEC had already been trading on several large global venues, but the order books were still adjusting to a new supply becoming liquid.

A sudden wave of KRW buy orders can overwhelm that kind of market, even if the project is widely known.

Trading activity reflected the shift. AZTEC’s 24-hour volume moved into the hundreds of millions of dollars during the surge, far above levels seen in the days after its launch.

Kimchi premium opens, arbitrage narrows the spread

The sharpest moves were concentrated on Korean quotes at the start, where demand can outrun available sell orders.

That is when the kimchi premium tends to show up. It is the price gap between Korean exchange prices and offshore prices, usually driven by local demand and local fiat rails.

As the premium opened, arbitrage traders could buy AZTEC on non-Korean venues and sell into KRW demand. That flow typically pulls prices closer together across exchanges as liquidity catches up.

AZTEC token powers sequencer staking and governance

Aztec is pitched as a privacy-focused Ethereum layer-2 built around zero-knowledge proofs. The token sits inside that design.

Project materials describe AZTEC as a staking and governance asset tied to the network’s sequencer set. Operator documentation also sets a minimum stake requirement for running a sequencer.

The token became broadly transferable after a February token generation event that followed an earlier on-chain sale process and a community vote on unlocking.

Exchange access is now wider, but the market still has to digest supply

A listing spike can change who can buy a token, not how much two-way liquidity exists.

With KRW pairs now live on both Upbit and Bithumb, AZTEC has reached a new audience. The next phase is less about the headline and more about whether trading holds up once the first wave of forced buyers and momentum traders clears.