✓ Verified by 2+ outlets
South Korea's GOPAX halts trading and standard withdrawals after a hacking-threat email
Summary
South Korean crypto exchange GOPAX suspended deposits, standard withdrawals and trading on Friday after receiving an email that threatened a hack, Cointelegraph and Bitcoin Magazine reported, citing local coverage including Kyunghyang Shinmun and Yonhap.
Bitcoin Magazine said standard deposit and withdrawal services stopped at 2:55 p.m. local time and trading at 3:53 p.m.; Cointelegraph put those stops at 5:55 am UTC and 6:53 UTC. Both said no actual loss of assets had been reported and that open orders were canceled.
GOPAX said it plans to move all held virtual assets into cold wallets; customers who want coins out must apply through the support center for manual verification, which the exchange warned will take longer than usual.
Cointelegraph said the freeze comes days after South Korea's Financial Services Commission urged domestic exchanges to raise cold-wallet holdings after the Binance hack and that exchanges must keep at least 80% of customer crypto offline; Bitcoin Magazine noted an earlier, separate account-leak incident at GOPAX has not been confirmed as linked to Friday's threat.
Key facts
- Cointelegraph / Bitcoin Magazine: GOPAX suspended trading and standard withdrawals Friday after a hacking-threat email; no asset loss reported so far.
- Bitcoin Magazine (Yonhap): deposits/withdrawals halted 2:55 p.m. local, trading 3:53 p.m.; all open orders canceled; no reopen date set.
- Both: GOPAX is transferring assets to cold wallets; web/app withdrawals unavailable; manual withdrawals via support after internal verification.
- Cointelegraph: Korean exchanges must keep at least 80% of customer crypto in cold storage; FSS data previously showed GOPAX at 80.54% offline at end-September.