The Threshold Upbit pump began at exactly 00:00 UTC on Sunday, October 25, which is 09:00 in Seoul. Upbit’s KRW-T pair had been trading about 2 million won per five minutes. In the five-minute candle that opened at 00:00 it traded 4.44 billion. T went from 6.21 won to 8.00 won inside that candle and reached 10.8 won within the hour. Binance’s T/USDT followed, from $0.00464 to a high of $0.00791, a gain of 70.5%.
By 09:00 UTC on Monday, T/USDT was back at $0.00483. That is about 4% above where Sunday started.
Where the Threshold Upbit pump volume came from
Upbit’s daily candles for KRW-T show between 152 million and 502 million won traded each day from October 17 to October 24. Sunday’s candle shows 206.5 billion won, roughly 546 times Saturday’s 378 million. The first hour alone, 00:00 to 01:00 UTC, was 43.2 billion.
Binance moved too, just much less. The Threshold Upbit pump was a Korean-led move first. T/USDT turned over $118,903 on Saturday and $18.69 million on Sunday, about 157 times as much. The pump showed up on the Korean venue first and by the largest multiple, and Binance’s price followed it.
Futures open interest quadrupled and then stayed
Binance’s T perpetual held $1.38 million of open interest at 00:00 UTC on Sunday. Four hours later it was $5.77 million, and the peak was $6.74 million at 12:00 UTC. The latest reading, 08:00 UTC Monday, is $5.73 million. Price gave back nearly everything while open interest barely moved, so the leveraged positions opened during the spike are still there.
Funding on that contract tells which side is paying. The settlements at 22:00, 23:00 and 00:00 UTC came in at -0.35%, -0.44% and -0.52%. A negative rate means shorts pay longs. By 09:00 UTC on Monday it had eased to -0.05%.
A second leg after the Threshold Upbit pump faded
Sunday’s fade was slow. Upbit’s hourly volume dropped under 1 billion won by 16:00 UTC and sat there until midnight. Then at 00:00 UTC on Monday, 09:00 in Seoul again, KRW-T fell from 7.54 to 6.56 won on 3.18 billion won of volume, down 13%. Binance’s candle for that hour went from $0.00555 to a low of $0.00492.
That is why CoinGecko lists T at -28.9% over 24 hours. The window opens partway through the post-spike plateau, not at the pre-spike price.
What the chart says about T at $0.00481
RSI(14) on the hourly chart topped 90 in Sunday’s first hour. It sits at 37.7 now, having dropped under 50 around Sunday afternoon. Price is parked in a narrow pocket. Overhead is $0.004838, where the four-hour chart printed equal highs on Friday, October 23. Underneath is $0.004733, Monday’s low so far, which is the level that matters if sellers return. Bitcoin, for context, is at $80,207 against a 100-day average of $75,612.
The levels turn into two conditions:
- Up: a one-hour close above $0.004838 points to $0.004981 and then $0.005273, Monday’s high. It fails if a one-hour candle closes back under $0.004814.
- Down: a one-hour close under $0.004733 points to $0.004661 and then $0.004651. It fails if a one-hour candle closes back over $0.004757.
Both are conditions on closes, not forecasts. Neither says the Threshold Upbit pump will repeat. For comparison, EPIC’s delisting slide and the NXPC spike on a 25-minute clock were both single-venue events as well, and our BAT piece covers another open-interest jump. The raw Korean candles are on Upbit’s KRW-T page.
