South Korea’s crypto exchange GOPAX announced on Friday that it has suspended trading, deposits and standard withdrawals following an email that threatened a hack, according to the local newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun. The move comes as the Financial Services Commission (FSC) recently urged domestic platforms to increase the proportion of assets held in cold storage after the large‑scale Binance breach.

Timeline of the suspension

GOPAX halted deposits and standard withdrawals at 5:55 am UTC and stopped all trading at 6:53 am UTC, cancelling any unfilled orders. The exchange has not confirmed that a hack actually occurred, stating that no theft or intrusion was detected at the time of the announcement.

Regulatory backdrop

South Korean regulators require exchanges to keep at least 80 % of customer crypto in cold wallets. Data from the Financial Supervisory Service showed GOPAX held 80.54 % of assets offline at the end of September, barely meeting the threshold. The FSC has been tightening oversight after identifying cybersecurity gaps at 130 of 555 reviewed financial firms and naming GOPAX operator Streami among companies previously involved in security incidents.

Impact on users

Customers can still request withdrawals through GOPAX’s support center, but the exchange warned that manual verification and approvals could cause delays. No specific timeline for resuming normal operations was provided.

The suspension follows a similar action by another South Korean exchange, Prabang, which halted services after abnormal hot‑wallet withdrawals on Oct. 24, reporting losses of roughly 100 million won.

What to watch next

Observers will monitor whether GOPAX completes the migration of all assets to offline storage and how long manual withdrawals take to process. Further guidance from the FSC on cold‑wallet ratios and any additional security audits of GOPAX could also shape the exchange’s operational roadmap.