Gopax Halts Trading After Hacking Threats, Moves Assets to Cold Wallets

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Gopax suspended all trading and deposit-and-withdrawal services on Nov. 6 after receiving threats of a potential hacking attack, the exchange said in a notice to customers. The halt began at 2:55 p.m. local time for deposits and withdrawals, with trading shut down at 3:53 p.m.

Gopax said it took the preventive measures in response to recommendations from financial authorities, aiming to protect customer funds and reinforce its security systems. It's a rare full-stop response from a licensed Korean exchange, and it signals how seriously regulators and platforms are treating threat intelligence after a bruising stretch of incidents across the country's digital asset sector.

What happens to customer funds?

The exchange plans to transfer all customer-held virtual assets into offline cold wallets to shrink its exposure to a potential cyberattack. That's an operational reset: hot-wallet infrastructure goes dark, and everything sits in storage disconnected from the internet.

Customers can't withdraw funds through the website or the mobile app while the suspension lasts. Gopax is instead accepting withdrawal requests through its customer service center, where staff review and approve each one manually. The exchange warned that this process may take longer than standard withdrawals — a practical acknowledgement that throughput collapses when you replace automated rails with human review.

No restoration timeline appears in the exchange's statement, leaving users without a firm date for when normal service resumes.

Why did Gopax act now?

The suspension follows a string of security failures hitting South Korea's crypto industry and its broader financial sector in quick succession:

• Oct. 24: Pravang reported the theft of approximately 100 million won worth of virtual assets.
• Oct. 27: Bithumb suffered a data breach affecting information belonging to 6,444 customers and 715 employees.
• Oct. 29: Binance suffered a hacking incident with approximately $6.3 billion in reported damages, intensifying sector-wide concern.

Three incidents in under a week put every Korean exchange under pressure to show it can act before an attack lands rather than after. Gopax's decision to halt services on the basis of threats alone — not an actual breach — fits that defensive posture.

Who is Gopax and why does Binance matter here?

Gopax is one of South Korea's five major won-denominated cryptocurrency exchanges, alongside Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit. Its market position is thin, though: the exchange accounts for only 0.01% to 0.02% of domestic trading volume, a rounding error in a market dominated by its larger rivals.

The ownership structure adds a layer. Binance holds approximately 67% of Gopax's shares, making it the largest shareholder. That means Gopax's security posture is directly entangled with Binance's global risk profile — and with the fallout from Binance's own Oct. 29 incident, which produced roughly $6.3 billion in reported damages. A threat against a Binance-controlled venue carries reputational weight for the world's largest exchange group, which raises the incentive to over-respond rather than under-respond.

What's the operational cost of the halt?

For an exchange already holding a sliver of Korean trading volume, a full trading stop compounds the problem. Every hour offline pushes whatever liquidity remains toward Upbit and the other majors, and manual withdrawal processing through a call center doesn't scale. Gopax hasn't disclosed how many customers it serves or how long the cold-wallet migration will take.

The episode also lands in front of Korean financial authorities at an awkward moment. Regulators recommended the protective steps, per Gopax's statement, so the halt is technically compliance in action. But a market where the fifth-largest exchange must go dark over threats is one where confidence in the sector's baseline security is genuinely shaken.

Cold-wallet migration, once complete, would leave Gopax with a hardened custody setup — but customers will judge the exchange on how quickly it reopens deposits, withdrawals and trading, and whether the manual withdrawal queue clears without disputes.