PONS lists on Upbit and Bithumb, sees 33.27 billion won in Upbit trading in 3.5 hours

PONS, the token of Robinhood Chain memecoin launchpad Pons, was listed on the Korean won markets of South Korea's two largest exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, on the same day, Oct. 8. Upbit posted its notice at 11:37 a.m. KST and opened PONS trading against the won, bitcoin and USDT at 2 p.m., while Bithumb posted its notice 19 minutes later, at 11:56 a.m., and opened its won market at 3 p.m.

Notices 19 minutes apart, trading an hour apart

Both exchanges support deposits and withdrawals only on Robinhood Chain, and PONS sent over any other network will not be credited. Upbit published the token's contract address (0x39dB…4571) in its notice, while Bithumb requires 5,000 block confirmations for deposits. Upbit said the per-withdrawal limit for PONS will be set at 100 million won worth of tokens on the 20th business day counting from the business day after trading opens. Bithumb said it may restrict deposits and withdrawals or require extra verification for members who signed up within seven days of the notice.

Both exchanges blocked buy orders for the first five minutes of trading and accepted only limit orders for about two hours. Their sell-price limits differed. For five minutes, Upbit blocked sell orders at 10% or more below the previous day's CoinMarketCap close of 527.94 won, while Bithumb blocked sell orders at 10% or more below, or 100% or more above, its 521-won reference price. Bithumb also launched listing promotions worth a total of 100 million won. Customers who bring in at least 10 million won of PONS from another exchange or a personal wallet and sell it with maker orders receive 0.7% to 1.5% of the qualifying amount, up to a total of 70 million won. A separate 30 million won trading promotion pays tiered prizes to the top five traders among customers who register for the promotion and trade at least 10 million won in the won market, while the rest share a total of 2.4 million won, capped at 20,000 won per person. Bithumb also added DeAgentAI (AIA) and Cash Cat (CASHCAT) to its won market the same day.

A launchpad linking tokenized stocks and memecoins

Pons lets users launch and trade tokens on Robinhood Chain without writing token code or building liquidity pools. According to Pons' official documentation, each new token has a fixed supply of 1 billion, a launch fee of 0.0005 ETH and a 1% pool fee. Under the current version, 70% of trading fees go to the token creator and 30% to Pons. Of Pons' share, 80% is used to buy PONS on the market and burn it, and the remaining 20% covers infrastructure and team operations. The documentation says the split is not yet immutable and that Pons plans to make it immutable and automated. Tokens launched under the earlier version split fees 90% to the creator and 10% to Pons. PONS itself is a reference token launched under that earlier version.

In its notice, Bithumb said Pons lets users pair memecoins directly not only with ETH but also with tokenized stocks such as Tesla (TSLA) and Nvidia (NVDA), and that tokens launch with no allocation reserved for the team. Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain built by U.S. brokerage Robinhood on Arbitrum technology, and its mainnet went live on July 1. Fees on the chain are paid in ETH, and Robinhood offers 24/7 trading of stock tokens on it to users in more than 120 countries. According to an Arbitrum DAO factsheet, Robinhood Chain pays 10% of its net revenue to the Arbitrum side as a license fee.

33.27 billion won on Upbit in three and a half hours

As of 5:32 p.m. KST on Oct. 8, PONS traded at 552 won in Upbit's won market. After a first trade at 572 won, it rose as high as 594 won and fell as low as 545 won. On an hourly basis, trading value dropped quickly, from 22.66 billion won in the 2 p.m. hour to 6.26 billion won at 3 p.m. and 3.05 billion won at 4 p.m. Cumulative trading value stood at 33.27 billion won. At the same time, PONS traded at 550 won on Bithumb, with cumulative trading value of 3.29 billion won.

The OKX price of $0.4066 converts to about 544 won at an exchange rate of 1,339 won per dollar, putting the Upbit price about 1.4% above the global price, a gap known as the kimchi premium (the gap between prices on Korean exchanges and global markets). CoinGecko data showed 24-hour PONS trading volume of about $15.5 million on Gate, about $12.4 million on OKX and about $8.5 million on Bybit. According to CoinGecko, PONS hit an all-time high of $0.971 on Sept. 5, and the current price is less than half of that. The same data put its market capitalization at about $278 million (ranked 157th), with about 679.5 million tokens in circulation out of a maximum supply of 1 billion. Upbit said in its notice that price gaps between Korean and overseas exchanges can persist and urged users to check them before investing.