Upbit and Bithumb List AI Tokens Talus and Dolphin as Korea Chases the Next Narrative

South Korea’s two largest crypto exchanges opened the door to two new AI-linked tokens on Oct. 2, as Bithumb listed Talus on its won market while Upbit added Dolphin across three trading pairs, deepening Korean traders’ access to the artificial intelligence infrastructure sector.

Bithumb announced that Talus, ticker US, would begin trading against the Korean won at 3 p.m. Korea Standard Time, with deposits supported only through the Sui network. Upbit separately scheduled Dolphin, ticker POD, to start trading at 4 p.m. across its KRW, BTC and USDT markets, with deposits and withdrawals handled through Base.

Bithumb gives Talus direct won trading

Bithumb’s listing gives Korean users a direct won market for Talus without requiring an intermediate stablecoin or Bitcoin trade. Deposits and withdrawals were set to open within two hours of the exchange’s 12:14 p.m. notice, subject to the required 20 network confirmations.

The exchange set a reference price of KRW37.85 for the token before trading began. As with all newly listed assets, Bithumb imposed its standard volatility controls: buy orders were blocked for the first five minutes, sell orders during that window could not be placed below 90% or above 200% of the reference price, and only limit orders were available for roughly the first two hours.

Talus describes itself as an on-chain AI-agent platform that combines blockchain-based verification with off-chain computation. Its Nexus framework organizes services into workflows while letting resource-heavy tasks run outside the chain. The project said in August that Protocol v2.0 had been deployed on Sui mainnet, upgrading the infrastructure used by AI agents that can execute transactions and other actions while leaving records verifiable on-chain. Built on the Sui Move stack, the US token is used for service pricing, staking and governance-related participation.

Upbit opens three markets for Dolphin

Upbit took a broader approach with Dolphin, launching POD against the Korean won, Bitcoin and Tether simultaneously. Pre-listing reference prices were set at KRW428, 0.00000367 BTC and 0.3147 USDT at 1:20 p.m. Korea time, with trading due to begin at 4 p.m. Deposits and withdrawals run exclusively through Base, with the exchange publishing the contract address 0xeD664536023d8E4b1640C394777D34aBAFF1dF8F for verification.

Dolphin is an AI and decentralized physical infrastructure project focused on distributing AI inference work across unused GPUs. Nodes running the same AI model are grouped into pools, with user requests assigned to available computing resources. Poloniex, which listed POD in May, described the project as an AI lab developing open models and distributed inference, with a total supply of 500 million tokens on Base.

The project previously developed the Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition in collaboration with Venice, and its design lets GPU owners contribute computing capacity for inference work in exchange for network rewards. According to Upbit’s notice, POD is used for staking and bonding within the network.

Upbit applied similar listing safeguards: purchases were restricted for approximately five minutes, low-priced sell orders faced initial limits, and only limit orders were supported during the early trading window.

Two different bets on AI infrastructure

While both listings target the AI narrative that has dominated token launches this cycle, the projects differ materially. Talus is building an agent-execution layer on Sui, betting that autonomous AI agents will need blockchain rails for verifiable actions and payments. Dolphin is building a compute-distribution network on Base, betting that inference demand will outstrip centralized GPU capacity and that idle hardware can be pooled profitably.

The dual listings also reflect Korean exchanges’ intensifying competition for retail flow. Upbit and Bithumb have historically moved quickly on tokens with strong narratives, and simultaneous listings of separate AI projects on the same day underscore how central the sector has become to their listing strategies.

Cautions for traders

Korean won markets are notorious for kimchi premiums and violent first-day swings on low-cap listings, and the exchanges’ own trading restrictions acknowledge that risk. Both projects remain early-stage: Talus Protocol v2.0 shipped only weeks ago, and Dolphin’s inference network is still scaling beyond its initial GPU pools.

Network restrictions add another layer of risk. Talus deposits are Sui-only while Dolphin moves exclusively over Base, meaning tokens sent on the wrong network — including via Binance or other global venues that support multiple chains — cannot be recovered. Upbit explicitly warned users to confirm the deposit network before transferring, a reminder that has accompanied nearly every multichain listing this year.

As always with freshly listed tokens, liquidity is thin, reference prices are provisional, and the initial price discovery window can diverge sharply from global market prices once restrictions lift.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.