Upbit adds Nillion to its Korean won market; NIL slides from 159 won first trade to 124 won

South Korea's largest exchange Upbit said at 4:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 27 that it would add Nillion (NIL) to its Korean won (KRW) market, with trading set to start at 4:40 p.m. the same day. NIL had been listed on Upbit's BTC and USDT markets since August, but this is the first time it can be bought and sold directly for won.

NIL jumps 44% on Binance within a minute of the notice

Offshore prices moved first. Binance one-minute candles show NIL closed at $0.09716 at 4:29 p.m. KST, then hit $0.13968 at 4:30 p.m., when the notice went up — a gain of as much as 43.8% in a single minute. NIL trading volume on Binance rose from about $380,000 in the 3 p.m. hour to $12.39 million in the 4 p.m. hour, more than 30 times higher.

On Upbit's won market, the first trade printed at 4:45 p.m., according to one-minute candles. Upbit said in its notice that buy orders would be blocked for about five minutes after trading opened. The first trade was at 159 won, and the high in that first minute was 170 won. The first trade was 35% above the previous day's BTC-market close that Upbit listed in its notice (0.0000011 BTC, or 117.6 won).

From 159 won at the open to 124 won six hours later

The gains did not hold. NIL traded between 128 and 144 won on Upbit in the 5 p.m. hour and between 128 and 136 won in the 6 p.m. hour before slipping into the 120s at night. It changed hands at 124 won on Upbit at 10:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 27, 22% below the first trade and 27% below the high. Won-market trading volume for the day came to about 60.76 billion won.

NIL prices on Bithumb, where the token was already listed against the won, also swung sharply over the same period. NIL on Bithumb rose from 122 won to 196 won in the 4 p.m. hour and traded between 122 and 126 won in the 10 p.m. hour. At 10:31 p.m., Coinyong's price feed showed NIL at $0.0923 on Binance, or about 122.3 won, and 122 won on Upbit. The kimchi premium (the gap between prices on Korean exchanges and global markets) stood at about -0.2% at that time. The funding rate on Binance's NIL perpetual futures was -0.043%, meaning traders betting on a decline were paying those betting on a rise.

A token for computing on data that stays hidden

In its notice, Upbit described Nillion as privacy-computing infrastructure that stores, computes and runs AI workloads while keeping the data itself private. It consists of the Blind Computer, which bundles data storage (nilDB), confidential computing (nilCC) and private AI inference (nilAI), and Blacklight, a network of verification nodes that checks whether workloads running in secure hardware (TEE) are executed correctly. NIL is used for staking and rewards for Blacklight verification nodes and as a payment method for Nillion services.

Upbit added NIL to its BTC and USDT markets on Aug. 21 alongside Biconomy (BICO), Bubblemaps (BMT) and ETHGas (GWEI); trading was pushed back twice that day and started at 7 p.m. The notice listed NIL at 0.04094 USDT as of 9:30 a.m. that day. According to CoinGecko, NIL's all-time high was $0.897 on March 24, 2025, the day it listed on Binance, and the current price is nearly 90% below that. Circulating supply is about 510 million tokens and total supply about 1.01 billion.

A 1.27 million NIL prize pool funded by the project

Upbit also launched a trading event with a total of 1,270,500 NIL in prizes to mark the won-market listing, saying the event was run at the project's request. It runs from 4 p.m. on Oct. 27 to 3:59:59 p.m. on Oct. 29. The top 50 traders by cumulative NIL won-market volume will share 762,500 NIL, the top 10 by net NIL deposits will share 254,000 NIL, and users who reach trading volume of at least 1 million won or 100 million won can receive random boxes on a first-come, first-served basis. At Upbit's 10:30 p.m. price, the total prize pool is worth a little over 150 million won.