Binance Re-Enters South Korea by Buying Majority Stake in Crypto Exchange GOPAX
The acquisition sees Binance re-enter the South Korean market, having closed its affiliate there in December 2020 due to low usage.
Feb 3, 2023 at 10:12 a.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/O3KBBPEGYRFUPE6PE4QNW6V6SE.jpg)
(Unsplash)
Binance has acquired a majority stake in South Korean crypto exchange GOPAX, re-entering the country's crypto market having withdrawn from it two years ago.
The world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume closed its affiliate in South Korea in December 2020 due to low usage. Terms for the deal were not disclosed.
Binance's investment in GOPAX came via the Industry Recovery Initiative, which Binance leads and committed $1 billion to in November, in response to the fallout from the collapse of FTX.
Bloomberg had earlier reported on the deal.
GOPAX's parent firm Streami Inc., in which CoinDesk parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) became the second-largest shareholder in 2021, is one of the largest creditors of bankrupt crypto lender Genesis, which is also a DCG subsidiary.
Following Genesis' suspension of withdrawals in November, GOPAX did the same with its yield product GoFi.
The capital from Binance will allow withdrawals and interest payments to recommence on GOPAX.
UPDATE (Feb. 3, 12:00 UTC): Adds link to Binance announcement and removes Bloomberg reference.
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Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.
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