Gopax Hacking Threat Freezes Trading and Withdrawals, With No Reopening Date Set

South Korean exchange Gopax shut down trading and standard withdrawals on Friday after a Gopax hacking threat landed in the company’s inbox, and it has not said when normal service will return. The exchange says no funds have been lost. It describes the freeze as a precaution while it moves customer crypto into offline storage.

What Gopax shut down, and when

According to the exchange’s notices, deposits and standard withdrawals stopped at 2:55 p.m. local time (5:55 a.m. UTC). Trading followed at 3:53 p.m., and all unfilled orders were canceled. Customers cannot send coins out through the website or app. They must apply through the customer support center, where each request is checked and approved manually, so processing will be slower than usual.

Reports differ slightly on deposits. Some coverage said they were paused with withdrawals, while a later Korean report cited by Bitcoin Magazine said deposits had been restored and only web and app withdrawals remained shut.

What is known about the threat

A Gopax representative told Korean media the email came from someone claiming they could hack the exchange. The company has not verified that claim. It also said that when services stopped, there had been no hack and no attempted theft. The exchange has framed the move as preventive, aimed at shrinking what an attacker could reach online by shifting remaining hot-wallet balances into cold storage, which is kept disconnected from the internet.

The notices also cited recommendations from financial regulators, following a run of leaks and hacking incidents at financial institutions.

Why regulators and rivals are on edge

The Gopax hacking threat arrives in an unusually tense week for exchange security. South Korea’s Financial Services Commission recently urged domestic platforms to raise their cold-wallet holdings after the roughly $6.3 billion theft from Binance’s hot wallets on Oct. 29. Bitcoin Magazine reports the FBI has tied that attack to North Korea, and that Binance says it is covering customer losses from its own funds. Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin also froze deposits and withdrawals this week after a security incident, with preliminary estimates of suspicious transfers near $40 million.

Korean exchanges must keep at least 80% of customer crypto offline. Financial Supervisory Service data showed Gopax held 80.54% offline at the end of September, only a sliver above the line. That makes a push toward deeper cold storage look as much like a compliance cushion as a response to one email.

Gopax’s record is also under scrutiny. In October the FSC reported cybersecurity deficiencies at 130 of 555 financial companies it reviewed. It named Gopax operator Streami, along with exchange Prabang, among 16 firms tied to earlier security incidents. Prabang suspended services on Oct. 24 after abnormal hot-wallet withdrawals and reported losses of about 100 million won (roughly $70,000), which it said it would reimburse.

Separately, Yonhap reported that abnormal access to some Gopax user accounts since early September leaked personal information on seven customers and two current or former employees, with further leakage confirmed last month. The company treats that as distinct from Friday’s email, and no link has been confirmed.

What to watch next

For customers, the practical result is a queue. Coins are being parked offline while support staff approve outgoing transfers one at a time. The key questions are whether Gopax finishes the cold-wallet transfer, clears withdrawal requests without any loss, and gives a date for trading to resume. The company has not commented beyond its notices, and Cointelegraph and crypto.news both said their requests for comment went unanswered. Until the threat is either substantiated or dismissed, the Gopax hacking threat remains an open question hanging over an exchange that regulators were already watching closely.

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