South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb is using an unusually targeted incentive to build liquidity around newly listed tokens: paying customers to bring assets in from competing exchanges or external wallets and then sell them through maker orders on Bithumb’s Korean-won order books.
The structure appeared in two campaigns launched on October 8 for PONS and DeAgentAI, or AIA, and goes considerably further than a conventional listing giveaway.
For PONS, customers must bring at least KRW10 million worth of the token into Bithumb from another exchange or external wallet and execute at least KRW10 million of PONS sales through maker orders on the PONS/KRW market.
Bithumb has allocated KRW70 million to that deposit-and-sell campaign, with qualifying traders receiving between 0.7% and 1.5% of their recognized amount depending on the applicable reward tier.
The campaign runs from the start of PONS deposits on October 8 through 23:59 KST on October 10. Bithumb also launched a separate KRW30 million PONS trading competition covering both purchases and sales.
The exchange opened PONS trading at 15:00 KST on October 8 with a reference price of KRW521. Deposits and withdrawals are supported through Robinhood Chain.
AIA Traders Get the Same Deposit-and-Maker-Sell Incentive
Bithumb introduced an almost identical mechanism for AIA, which began trading against the Korean won at 14:00 KST on October 8 with a reference price of KRW114.
The exchange allocated KRW45 million to traders who externally deposit at least KRW10 million of AIA and then execute at least KRW10 million of maker sell orders on Bithumb.
AIA traders can again receive between 0.7% and 1.5% of the qualifying amount. Bithumb is separately offering a KRW180 million trading reward pool and temporarily eliminating trading fees on AIA until October 11 at 13:59 KST.
There is a small numerical inconsistency in the notice. Bithumb advertises the overall AIA campaign as worth KRW220 million, while the two stated reward pools are KRW180 million and KRW45 million, which together equal KRW225 million before accounting for the zero-fee promotion.
The more interesting feature, however, is how Bithumb calculates the deposit-and-sale reward.
The recognized amount is effectively capped at the lower of the trader’s external net deposit and executed maker-sale volume. Bringing KRW100 million of tokens onto Bithumb and selling only KRW40 million through qualifying maker orders would therefore not produce a KRW100 million recognized amount.
Likewise, traders cannot simply use tokens that were already sitting in their Bithumb account. Internal Bithumb transfers and Korean-won deposits do not count toward the external token-deposit requirement.
Bithumb Specifically Wants Orders That Add to the Book
The maker requirement changes the economics of the campaign.
A market order or an immediately executable limit order takes liquidity already available in the order book. A maker order instead rests on the book before execution and creates new quoted liquidity for another participant to trade against.
Bithumb explicitly defines qualifying maker orders as limit orders that do not execute immediately and instead create new remaining quantity in the order book.
The exchange is therefore not merely paying users to generate turnover. It is rewarding them for first bringing token inventory onto Bithumb and then offering that inventory to buyers through resting sell orders.
API-executed maker trades also qualify, opening the campaign to more active or automated traders rather than limiting it to manually placed retail orders.
That is a more targeted market-structure intervention than the volume competitions increasingly used across crypto exchanges. Platforms such as Binance have recently used large trading tournaments to encourage token turnover, while KuCoin, Bitget and Biconomy have similarly been using rewards to direct trading activity into specific markets.
Bithumb’s structure adds another step: the assets themselves have to arrive from somewhere else first.
The Strategy Predates PONS and AIA
The October 8 campaigns do not appear to be isolated experiments.
On October 6, Bithumb offered the same external-deposit and maker-sale structure around its new Bedrock, or BR, KRW market. That campaign allocated KRW50 million to the deposit-and-sale component and again offered rewards of as much as 1.5%.
Bithumb also ran broader asset-migration campaigns earlier in 2026. One such program required participants to externally deposit at least KRW100 million of eligible assets and sell at least KRW100 million through maker orders, with additional conditions tied to how much of the imported inventory was eventually sold.
Taken together, the campaigns point to a repeatable strategy: use promotional spending to change where traders hold tokens and where those tokens are offered for sale.
That strategy is becoming more relevant as competition for Korean crypto activity intensifies. During the week ending October 2, South Korea’s five main won exchanges generated approximately KRW20.5 trillion in combined trading volume, down about 19.6% from the previous week. Upbit remained dominant with roughly 64% of activity, while Bithumb accounted for about 26.7%.
When overall activity is shrinking, winning a larger share of token inventory, order-book depth and active traders becomes more valuable.
Bithumb Is Subsidizing Both Inventory Migration and Liquidity
This is where the campaigns become more interesting than their “airdrop” branding suggests.
A new token listing has a cold-start problem.
The exchange can technically open a KRW market, but that does not automatically mean enough tokens are sitting on the platform to create a deep order book. Without sufficient inventory, spreads can remain wide, relatively small trades can move prices sharply and users may prefer to trade the asset somewhere else.
Bithumb’s promotion attacks that problem from two directions.
First, it pays traders to move tokens onto Bithumb from other exchanges and external wallets. That increases the pool of assets available inside Bithumb’s ecosystem.
Second, it only fully rewards that imported inventory when traders put it on the sell side through maker orders and those orders execute.
In practical terms, Bithumb is subsidizing both asset acquisition and market making.
Once another Bithumb customer buys the imported token, the original depositor may now hold won while the buyer holds the token. Unless the buyer withdraws it, the asset itself remains within Bithumb’s custody even though ownership has changed.
That makes the campaign potentially useful for more than short-term volume statistics. It can help establish a larger pool of token holders on Bithumb after the promotion ends.
More Volume Does Not Automatically Mean Better Liquidity
There is an important caveat.
Promotional activity can make a new market look busy without proving that it has developed durable organic liquidity.
Dave Finances recently examined how a small number of automated traders generated most of Avalanche’s DEX volume, illustrating why raw turnover alone can provide an incomplete picture of market quality.
Bithumb’s maker requirement is more meaningful than simply paying for volume because the trader must actually add a resting order before execution. But even that liquidity may disappear when the 0.7% to 1.5% subsidy disappears.
The real test for PONS and AIA will therefore come after October 10.
If spreads remain tight, order-book depth remains healthy and meaningful trading continues without rewards, Bithumb will have successfully used promotional spending to bootstrap a functioning market.
If activity collapses immediately afterward, the exchange may simply have rented liquidity for several days.
The Campaign Could Also Put Early Sell Pressure on New Listings
There is another side to the strategy for token holders.
Bithumb is specifically encouraging users who already own PONS or AIA elsewhere to move those tokens onto the exchange and sell them.
That creates a direct incentive for additional supply to appear on the KRW order book shortly after listing.
It does not necessarily mean the promotion will push prices lower. Every executed maker sell has a buyer on the other side, and deeper sell-side liquidity can reduce slippage and improve price discovery.
But the structure is materially different from an incentive focused on buying or simply depositing assets. It explicitly rewards existing holders for converting imported tokens into Korean won.
Retail traders chasing a new-listing rally therefore need to understand that part of the visible sell-side liquidity may be economically subsidized.
Bithumb Is Also Trying to Prevent Incentives From Becoming Wash Trading
Paying users based on trading behavior creates obvious abuse risks, and Bithumb’s terms attempt to address them.
The exchange says repetitive trading between particular accounts, abnormal transactions, matched orders, wash trading, self-trading and other forms of abusive participation can result in rewards being withheld or revoked.
That matters particularly in South Korea, where the Virtual Asset User Protection Act strengthened rules against unfair crypto trading, including market manipulation and the misuse of undisclosed information.
Bithumb’s use of external net deposits also makes the campaign harder to game simply by circulating existing balances internally. The promotion specifically measures assets arriving from outside the exchange and caps qualifying maker-sales at the value of those net deposits.
This Looks More Like Customer Acquisition Than an Airdrop
The most useful way to understand the PONS and AIA campaigns is not as free-token marketing.
Bithumb is buying a very specific set of customer behaviors.
It wants traders to remove token inventory from another venue or wallet, place that inventory on Bithumb, create KRW-denominated sell-side liquidity, complete trades and keep interacting with the exchange long enough to receive the reward.
That can improve order books while simultaneously shifting assets and customer activity toward Bithumb.
In a Korean market where Upbit still handles roughly twice Bithumb’s share of overall trading, that combination matters.
The headline cost is a few tens of millions of won per token campaign. The potential payoff is a deeper newly listed market, additional customer balances and traders who may remain on Bithumb after the subsidy ends.
That makes the real question less about how much PONS or AIA Bithumb is giving away and more about whether paying traders to import and sell inventory can permanently change where Korea’s crypto liquidity lives.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
Johan contributes news and analysis designed to help readers understand not only what happened, but why a development matters and how it may affect the wider financial landscape.