South Korea Weighs Crypto Market Makers After JPYC Price Surge

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September 28, 2026

A token engineered to track a single currency moved four times its intended value in about an hour. That gap between design and price is now forcing South Korea top financial regulator to confront a question it has avoided for years on crypto markets.

JPYC, a stablecoin designed to track the Japanese yen, began trading on Upbit on September 17. The market opened at 12 Korean won per token and climbed to a high of 37.6 won an hour later, or more than four times its estimated yen-linked market value.

That is not how a stablecoin is supposed to behave. The whole premise of the asset class is that the price tracks a reference value tightly enough that traders don’t need to think about it. Why the spike? The move to limited liquidity on Upbit rather than any change in JPYC’s underlying yen backing.