Customers of GOPAX, a Korean exchange whose operator Streami is majority-owned by Binance, can now get crypto out only by emailing a request, after GOPAX switched off trading and crypto deposits on Friday while it moves every coin into cold wallets. GOPAX announced the shift in two notices, and neither says when normal service will return.
At 2:55 p.m. local time (12:55 a.m. ET), GOPAX suspended all crypto deposits along with the regular withdrawal function on its website and app. Trading went dark at 3:53 p.m. (1:53 a.m. ET), and a follow-up notice said any orders still waiting to be matched had been canceled. Staff will check and approve each emailed request and process it by hand, so payouts could be slower than normal, the exchange said. Coins can go only to a personal wallet registered with GOPAX, not to another exchange for now, its help-center guide says. Neither notice says whether Korean won deposits and withdrawals are affected.
GOPAX described the step as preemptive, tying it to a run of data leaks and hacks at financial companies and saying it acted “following the recommendation of financial authorities,” according to Unchained’s translation of the Korean notices. GOPAX did not say any regulator ordered the halt.
Get Unchained’s crypto news in your inbox with the free Unchained Daily newsletter.
Threat Email Reported
Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that GOPAX acted after receiving an email from a sender threatening to hack the exchange. Speaking to Yonhap, a GOPAX official said the company had not yet confirmed whether the threat was real, and the agency said no customer assets had actually been lost so far. At that point the exchange had not been breached and nobody had tried to take funds, a GOPAX representative told the local daily Kyunghyang Shinmun, Cointelegraph reported. The GOPAX notices do not mention a threat against the exchange.
Regulators Asked for More Offline Storage
On Nov. 2, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission called local exchanges to an emergency meeting following the $6.3 billion theft from Binance and asked them to hold more crypto offline. GOPAX staff were among the attendees.
Binance holds 67.45% of Streami, Herald Business reported in February.
From the Floor to Fully Offline
Korean rules set an offline floor of 80% for customer crypto. As of Sept. 30, Streami sat just over it at 80.54%, Upbit at 99.17% and Bithumb at 94.76%, Block Media reported on Oct. 26, citing Financial Supervisory Service figures obtained by Rep. Min Byung-deok’s office. The FSC set no new ratio at the Nov. 2 meeting, though News1 reported in February that the regulator was studying an offline share of about 100% for its second-phase crypto rules, as Unchained noted.
By Unchained’s calculation, the September figure left about 19.46% of GOPAX customer crypto online. Emptying that slice moves GOPAX from the lowest offline share among the five won-based exchanges in the data to roughly the level the FSC has reportedly studied. It also shows what that level costs customers: with nothing left in hot wallets, no withdrawal goes out until a staff member approves it.
Related Listen: Binance Lost $6.3 Billion in 20 Minutes. Can Crypto Stop the Next One?
