South Korean Youth Trading Cryptocurrency Overnight, Diving Headfirst into Samsung and SK Hynix

"This year, not a single customer's demand can be fully satisfied."

South Korean chip giant SK Hynix stated that the company's overall DRAM and NAND inventory is only about 4 weeks, at a historically low level. From cloud providers like Google and Microsoft to AI companies like OpenAI and consumer electronics terminal manufacturers, all customers are unable to obtain sufficient supply.

Price increases are inevitable. Starting from the third quarter of 2025, SK Hynix raised HBM3E prices by 15%-20%, with the price of DDR5 16Gb chips surging by up to 102% in a single month. From November, all categories of DRAM saw price hikes, and NAND contract prices were also adjusted upward. In January 2026, another significant price increase occurred, ranging from 20% to 60%.

And the rise in stock prices is also inevitable. Since the beginning of 2025, SK Hynix's stock price has skyrocketed approximately sixfold, while another South Korean chip giant, Samsung Electronics, has seen its stock price rise nearly fourfold cumulatively.

This has also propelled the South Korean stock market's KOSPI index to break the 6000-point barrier for the first time. The total market capitalization of the South Korean stock market has exceeded $3.76 trillion, increasing by approximately $2.23 trillion since the beginning of 2025, surpassing the German and French stock markets successively and historically entering the global top ten, rising to the ninth position globally. Since 2026, the index has accumulated gains of nearly 45%, becoming one of the best-performing major stock markets globally.

South Korea, this tiny territory, whose stock market was long neglected by overseas funds due to low valuations, has now become a focal point in the global capital markets. It has also diverted the attention of South Korea's once crypto-crazy youth.

Repricing Samsung and SK Hynix

During the consumer electronics era, the industrial paradigm represented by Apple dominated for two decades.

As Apple's largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn employed over 1.4 million workers in China, positioned at the bottom of the "smile curve." Design, branding, and sales occupied the two ends of the curve, where profits curved upward. Profit distribution thus presented a stable structure: downstream (finished products/platforms) took the lion's share, while upstream suppliers got the scraps. After all, there were numerous upstream suppliers with high substitutability; product definition power lay with the brand manufacturers; demand was concentrated at the terminal; and switching costs were low.

Many Chinese manufacturers took pride in being "Apple component suppliers," but from an investment perspective, the consensus was to buy Apple stock, not Foxconn.

However, when four conditions converge—highly concentrated technology, slow capacity expansion, strong downstream dependence, and no short-term alternative paths—upstream players transform from "component suppliers" into "system bottlenecks." Upstream then gains pricing power.

This is precisely what is happening in the AI industry's HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) sector.

For over a decade, the semiconductor industry operated under a default premise: the computing bottleneck lay in the computing chips themselves. But large model training shattered this perception. As parameter scales moved from billions to trillions, GPUs faced a more practical issue: no matter how fast they compute, they need data to be fed in. HBM determines whether GPUs can operate at full capacity; whether cluster efficiency is maximized; and whether the cost per unit of computing power can be reduced. It has become the "vascular system" of AI chips.

The more advanced the GPU, the deeper its dependence on memory. Taking NVIDIA as an example, from A100 to H100, then to H200 and subsequent roadmaps, the HBM capacity and bandwidth bound to each generation of GPU have increased stepwise. As computing power doubles, HBM usage almost doubles synchronously. The proportion of HBM cost in the total BOM (Bill of Materials) of the entire card is getting higher and higher.

And the number of players globally with true large-scale mass production capabilities is extremely limited: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and (relatively smaller-scale) Micron Technology. Apple needs Samsung, NVIDIA needs SK Hynix.

When demand grows exponentially while supply cannot be released rapidly, price elasticity is amplified infinitely. In the traditional PC era, CPUs/GPUs took the bulk of the profits, while memory was strongly cyclical with weak bargaining power. In the AI server era, HBM has become an irreplaceable component. When a component possesses both irreplaceability and supply constraints, it means it holds absolute pricing power and is almost certain to capture超额利润.

Repricing Samsung and SK Hynix has become the main theme in most financial markets, including South Korea. The allure of this theme has even surpassed that of crypto.

South Korean Retail Investors Dive Headfirst into Semiconductors

If you opened a chat window with a young South Korean late at night in 2023 or 2024, Bitcoin was definitely a frequent topic. For a long time, South Korea has been one of the world's most retail-driven cryptocurrency markets, playing a pivotal role.

Now, in 2026, the fourth year after the LUNA crash, Do Kwon, who last brought immense attention from the financial industry to South Korea, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. This year of the Bing Wu Fire Horse is a year of strong fire. The AI industry is still in a massive boom, and South Korea, whose geographical location is associated with fire, clearly has an excess of fiery energy.

When Odaily editors recently opened Naver's investment forums, most posts were about "삼성전자" (Samsung Electronics) and "SK하이닉스" (SK Hynix). Samsung and SK Hynix.

South Korean investors, once keen on highly volatile altcoins, are now reallocating funds to domestic and international stocks, particularly those related to artificial intelligence and robotics.

According to Bloomberg statistics, trading volume on South Korean domestic cryptocurrency exchanges in January plummeted by approximately 65% year-on-year. In stark contrast, the trading volume of the KOSPI, the core benchmark for the South Korean stock market, surged by 221% during the same period. Margin balances at securities firms have exceeded 30 trillion won (approximately $20.8 billion).

The speculative nature of South Korean youth has not changed, but they have shifted their battleground.

This sign was already evident by the end of 2025.

In 2025, Upbit's trading volume fell by 80% compared to the same period in 2024, and the activity of the Bitcoin-KRW trading pair was far lower than in previous years. Conversely, the South Korean stock market was booming, with the KOSPI index surging over 70% within the year, continuously setting new historical highs. On Kakao Talk and Naver forums, retail investors who used to discuss altcoins daily are now talking about "AI semiconductor concept stocks."

This migration has also resonated subtly with the political atmosphere. Current President Lee Jae-myung prominently proposed the "KOSPI 5000" target during his campaign. It is rumored that he repeatedly suffered losses in the stock market when he was young, and this experience of "being harvested" became his motivation for promoting financial reform.

Furthermore, Lee Jae-myung understands one thing very clearly: whether the stock market can reach 5000 ultimately depends on whether corporate profits can reach a new level. And since the weighting of the South Korean stock market is highly concentrated in tech and semiconductor giants, he focused his bets on these industries.

After taking office, he quickly released strong capital market-friendly signals: establishing the "KOSPI 5000 Special Committee"; promoting amendments to the Commercial Act; strengthening rules for equalizing shareholder rights; and enhancing board accountability. On the eighth day of his term, he made a special visit to the Korea Exchange. The goal was singular: to keep South Korean residents' money in the stock market for the long term.

As for how high the South Korean stock market can rise, some analysis also suggests that besides the influence of the AI sector, political circles would also hope the upward trend continues until the local elections in June this year.

This atmosphere has also deeply affected the liquidity still in the crypto space.

On February 11, 2026, Lighter Exchange launched the world's first on-chain perpetual contracts for South Korean stocks, including Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Hyundai Motor, and the KOSPI index, with leverage up to 10x. A few days later, Trade XYZ listed Samsung and Hynix, also with 10x leverage.

This is also a highly symbolic scene: trading platforms that once hosted altcoin frenzies are now hosting South Korean stocks.

After all, in this era where AI is reshaping the world, semiconductors are sexier than altcoins.