Korean Retail Traders Shift From Bitcoin to Leveraged Stock Bets as Margin Risk Builds

South Korea's retail investors—once among the world's most aggressive participants in crypto markets—are increasingly shifting their risk appetite from Bitcoin (BTC) to domestic equities, where leverage is now building to levels that some analysts say look even more extreme than the most overheated phases of the digital-asset cycle. The pivot has been most visible since around September last year, when the long-observed tendency for Bitcoin and South Korea's benchmark KOSPI to move in broadly similar directions began to break down.