Crypto exchanges spent the first half of 2026 wrapping traditional finance in perpetual futures, and 3x leveraged ETFs on the Nasdaq, semiconductors and now South Korea's Kospi (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) drew users seeking round-the-clock exposure. The Korean product is the newest, and in Seoul the most contentious.
Binance's 75x Korea ETF Perp Draws Fire, but It's Not the Only One
1 July 2026 - 08:56 CEST
By Oihyun Kim
The 150x claim, checked
Perpetual futures are leveraged derivatives that track an asset's price without an expiry date. The KORUUSDT contract on Binance, listed on 22 Jun, is settled in the Tether stablecoin (USDT) and tracks Direxion Daily MSCI South Korea Bull 3X Shares, an ETF managed by New York-based Direxion that delivers three times the daily moves of the MSCI Korea 25/50 Index.
Korean-language outlets over the past few days have described traders taking positions worth up to 150 times the Kospi's daily move, citing disputed reports that Binance had raised the contract's leverage cap to 50x just days after listing.
A Binance spokesperson told Sandmark the KORUUSDT contract was listed at 20x on 22 Jun and later raised to 25x, where it remains, though the exchange did not specify when the change took effect. That places a ceiling on effective index exposure at 75x on Binance. KORUUSDT contracts on Bybit, OKX, Gate and KuCoin are capped at 20x, giving 60x effective exposure across those four venues. Kospi is up more than 100% year to date, the best performance among major indexes.
150x on US indexes
The looser caps are on US indexes. Binance and Gate cap SOXLUSDT at 50x, tracking the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF, which delivers three times the daily move of a US semiconductor index. Gate does the same for TQQQUSDT, based on ProShares UltraPro QQQ, a 3x Nasdaq-100 ETF from US issuer ProShares. Both translate to 150x effective exposure to the semiconductor and Nasdaq-100 indexes.
Six months to 75x
The category grew from commodities to indexes over six months, starting with gold and silver on Binance in January, US single stocks on OKX in March, and Bybit's TradFi (traditional finance) suite in April.
Korean names came in June, first as single-stock contracts on Binance for chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and automaker Hyundai Motor on 2 Jun, then as the KORU index contract on 22 Jun. Bybit, OKX, Gate and KuCoin added their own KORU listings within 48 hours.
Cumulative volume on Binance's KORUUSDT approached $1.4bn in its first eight days through 29 Jun, according to TradingView. On 1 Jul, 24-hour volume reached $436.7mn as prices fell 11%.
It is believed to be the first perpetual futures contract on a single-country leveraged ETF. What Direxion offers for China, Europe and Mexico has no crypto-derivative counterpart yet, and its single-country roster is itself short: Japan, Taiwan, India and most large equity markets have no 3x ETF at all.
