South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Gopax suspended withdrawals and trading on Friday after receiving a hacking-threat email, and said it is moving all held virtual assets into offline cold wallets as a preemptive step to protect customer funds.
Gopax halted standard deposit and withdrawal services at 2:55 p.m. local time and stopped trading at 3:53 p.m. on Friday. “To ensure the safe custody of user assets, we plan to transfer all virtual assets to cold wallets for storage,” Gopax said in a statement carried by Seoul Economic Daily. “We ask for your understanding, as this measure is intended to prevent financial incidents and protect user assets.”
Direct withdrawals through the Gopax website and app remain unavailable. “Direct withdrawals through the Gopax website or app are temporarily unavailable, and customers wishing to withdraw funds should apply through the Gopax customer support center,” the exchange said. All open orders were canceled when trading went offline. Deposits were initially paused but later restored.
A Gopax official told Yonhap News Agency that “the email came from a party claiming it could hack the exchange, but that the threat itself had not been verified.” No actual loss of assets has been reported. Cold wallets are storage setups kept offline and cut off from the internet, reducing the surface available to online attackers.
The move aligns with South Korean regulatory requirements. South Korea’s Financial Services Commission mandates that exchanges keep at least 80% of customer cryptocurrency in cold storage. Gopax’s shift to full cold-wallet storage exceeds this minimum threshold.
Prior Security Issues at Gopax
The Friday threat email comes after Gopax experienced abnormal account access beginning in early September. That breach leaked personal information on seven customers and two current or former employees, with further data leakage confirmed in October. Gopax treats the September account breach as separate from Friday’s threat email; any link has not been confirmed.
Broader Exchange Security Incidents
Gopax’s precautionary lockdown follows a wave of high-profile exchange security incidents. On October 29, attackers drained approximately $6.34 billion from Binance hot wallets in a months-long campaign. The FBI tied the attack to North Korea. Binance has since reopened withdrawals in stages and said it is covering customer losses.
Earlier in the week, Mercado Bitcoin in Brazil froze deposits and withdrawals after a security incident with preliminary estimates of suspicious transfers near $40 million.
