A major trading platform just paid $200 million to acquire a South Korean exchange, turning a seemingly modest deal into a license play. Here's the math: Korea's VASP license—the golden ticket for crypto operations handling KRW pairs—costs over $1 billion to build from scratch. Korbit holds one of only 5 such licenses, despite commanding less than 1% market share. That's the asymmetry that made the acquisition attractive. The previous owner, a gaming giant, picked up Korbit for $80 million back in 2017, but now they're racing to exit before Q1 regulatory penalties kick in. Translation: the acquirer scored roughly a 60% discount on what replicating that regulatory footprint would cost independently. It's not about Korbit's current volume—it's about the regulatory infrastructure and paired trading permissions that took years to establish. A blueprint for how established players leapfrog regulatory barriers in restricted markets.