Gopax Halts Trading and Standard Withdrawals as It Moves Crypto to Cold Storage

Gopax’s precautionary shutdown

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Gopax suspended standard withdrawals and trading on Friday after receiving an email from a party claiming it could hack the platform. The exchange described its response as precautionary: it plans to move virtual assets held on the platform into offline cold wallets to protect customer funds. The threat has not been verified, and Gopax has reported no actual loss of assets.

According to the exchange, standard deposit and withdrawal services stopped at 2:55 p.m. local time, followed by trading at 3:53 p.m. The sequence matters because customers lost access to ordinary exchange functions in stages. Gopax has not said when trading or standard withdrawals will return, leaving the duration of the disruption unresolved while the company carries out its custody measures.

The company’s stated goal is to reduce exposure by transferring remaining virtual-asset balances held in online hot wallets into cold storage. Cold wallets are kept offline, unlike hot wallets used to process internet-connected transactions. Gopax presented the transfer as a way to safeguard assets while it assesses the threat, not as confirmation that an attacker entered its systems or that customer balances were compromised.

How access to customer assets has changed

Trading has stopped and all open orders were canceled, according to Korean coverage cited in the report. Customers therefore cannot rely on the exchange’s usual order and trade functions during the suspension. Gopax has not provided a timetable for restoring those services, so users have no confirmed indication of when they will again be able to place orders or resume trading on the platform.

Direct withdrawals through Gopax’s website and app are unavailable. Customers seeking to move coins out must instead contact the customer support center, where requests are handled manually after internal verification. The exchange says this route remains available, but it also cautions that processing will take longer than usual. The practical result is a controlled, staff-mediated process rather than immediate self-service access.

Deposit availability has been reported differently over the course of the shutdown. Deposits were initially paused alongside withdrawals, while later Korean coverage said deposits had been restored; withdrawals through the website and app remained closed. That distinction means the platform’s service status is not a single all-or-nothing switch. Gopax has not supplied a reopening date for standard withdrawals or trading.

A wider security context in South Korea

The exchange framed its response as an effort to prevent a financial incident and protect user assets. Its official told Yonhap that the email came from someone claiming an ability to hack Gopax, while emphasizing that the claim itself had not been verified. The public facts therefore establish the receipt of a threat and a precautionary lockdown, but not whether the sender had access, capability, or a credible plan.

The shutdown comes amid heightened attention to exchange security. The source reports that on Oct. 29 attackers drained about $6.34 billion from Binance hot wallets in a campaign Binance later described as lasting months and beginning with a fake job interview. The FBI has linked that theft to North Korea. Binance reopened withdrawals in stages and said it would cover customer losses from its own funds.

Another comparison in the report is Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin, which froze deposits and withdrawals earlier in the week after a security incident. Preliminary estimates put suspicious transfers near $40 million. Gopax’s disclosed situation is not established as a similar theft: so far, the exchange has described an unverified threat email and precautionary measures, with no reported loss. The cases differ on the information available.

What customers and the exchange still need to learn

Gopax has also faced account-security trouble separate from the latest threat email. Abnormal access beginning in early September affected some user accounts and exposed personal information relating to seven customers and two current or former employees. Yonhap’s Korean dispatch said further leakage was confirmed last month. The company has treated that breach as separate from Friday’s email, and no connection between the events has been confirmed.

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has been pressing domestic platforms after a broader wave of cybersecurity incidents across financial firms, according to the source. Local exchanges are already required to hold at least 80% of customer crypto in cold storage. Gopax’s planned transfer would move its remaining hot-wallet balances offline as well, though the report does not specify the amount being transferred or when the process will finish.

For Gopax customers, the immediate consequence is slower access to withdrawals: each request must go through customer support and internal verification while direct app and website withdrawals remain unavailable. The key open questions are whether the cold-wallet transfer will be completed without loss, how quickly the manual queue can be processed, and when ordinary withdrawals and trading will resume. The exchange has not yet answered those timing questions publicly.

Source: BitcoinMagazine