Korbit and CoinWon Introduce 0% Fees in Bitcoin (BTC) Trading Battle

Exchanges Battle for Traders With Fee Cuts

South Korea's Korbit and CoinWon have both moved to 0% trading fees in a battle for Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoin market share, escalating a fight in a market where Upbit and Bithumb control roughly 97% of won-based trading. Korbit, whose operator Digital X now sits under Mirae Asset Group, began waiving fees on all won-market trades on Aug. 24 for one year, with no application or volume conditions. CoinWon answered on Aug. 26 by cutting fees to 0% across every market, giving users a 30-day fee-waiver voucher that can be reissued unlimited times through the app; it had already removed fees on Open API trades on Aug. 21. The campaign lands after both firms secured deep-pocketed backers. Korea Investment & Securities and OKX Ventures each invested roughly 80 billion won in CoinWon in May, taking around 20% stakes, while Mirae Asset Consulting acquired 97.15% of Korbit for about 141.4 billion won and later committed an extra 50 billion won. The operator has been renamed Digital X and is reviewing tokenized real-world assets, security tokens, stablecoin services and institutional custody as next-step businesses. With both exchanges now tied to major securities groups, the zero-fee offensive is widely read as a proxy rivalry between Korea Investment & Securities and Mirae Asset. The pressure is visible in the numbers: August market data puts Upbit at 68.11% and Bithumb at 28.95% of daily KRW trading value, for a combined 97.06%, with CoinWon at 2.39% and Korbit at 0.52%. Upbit and Bithumb have also responded, with Upbit waiving fees on major stablecoins since July 26 and Bithumb extending zero-fee trading to its BTC market and Open API orders, according to exchange notices. Industry participants caution that the fee-free period will only produce durable gains if users stay after the promotion ends, with order-book depth and real liquidity as the deciding factors.

International derivatives platform Zoomex is competing for the same trader liquidity from the product side, consolidating stock contracts, commodity contracts and stock tokens into a single TradFi Zone. The exchange paired the upgrade with an Early Bird campaign offering an 80% discount coupon on trading fees for nearly 100 traditional-asset pairs; registration runs from Aug. 21 to Sep. 2, 2026 UTC, and the voucher is valid for five days after being claimed. Stock and commodity contracts settle in USDT within the same unified margin account used for crypto perpetuals, letting traders open long or short positions across equities, metals and digital assets without converting to fiat. Stock contracts support leverage up to 20x and trade around the clock, while stock tokens track major equities on a spot basis with custody-held real-world assets behind each token. The eligible roster spans names such as Alphabet (GOOGL) and Alibaba, and the platform says the overhaul rests on the same Proof-of-Reserves and rule-based liquidation framework as its crypto books. The platform's stock perpetual lineup has exceeded 50 contracts this year, and a parallel Stock Perpetuals Competition offers an escalating prize pool for traders in equity perpetuals. Zoomex, which reports more than 3 million users across 35 countries, has also introduced automated and copy trading tools through its Strategy Center as part of a broader 2026 expansion. The exchange points to registrations including U.S. and Canadian MSB, U.S. NFA and Australia AUSTRAC as part of the compliance framework behind the new products. The company frames the consolidation as a step toward letting traditional and digital assets sit side by side under one transparent set of rules.

The two initiatives point to a shared strategic shift: exchanges are treating fee revenue as a customer-acquisition cost and expanding beyond spot crypto to lock in liquidity. The official exchange announcements behind both moves — Korbit's one-year waiver, CoinWon's renewable vouchers and Zoomex's 80% discount — put user growth ahead of short-term fee income. August market-share data supplies the clearest baseline for the wager: with the top two Korean venues controlling 97.06% of KRW trading value, challengers must either outspend on price or outbuild on access. Bitcoin (BTC) trading is the most immediate battlefield, but the longer-term test is whether zero-fee users convert into sticky order-book liquidity once the promotions expire. The competitive picture could shift again if South Korea opens corporate digital-asset trading and passes the Digital Asset Basic Act, a scenario several industry participants describe as the next inflection point for the zero-fee gambit. That leaves the sustainability of the zero-fee model as the central question for the months ahead.