Binance re-enters South Korea with acquisition of GOPAX

Binance is returning to South Korea after two years to acquire a majority stake in the troubled crypto exchange, GOPAX. The funding comes from Binance’s latest crypto industry recovery initiative.

Weeks after the FTX collapse, Changpeng Zhao announced a $1 billion industry recovery initiative. According to the plan, the VC arm of Binance Labs will assist crypto companies suffering from liquidity crises.

Related: Binance may buy FTX assets

That’s exactly what happened to South Korean crypto exchange GOPAX, which saw its yield product GoFi fall behind in November. GoFi was relying on the recently bankrupted crypto lender, Genesis Global.

Related: First hearing scheduled in Genesis bankruptcy case

News of Binance’s acquisition of GOPAX’s majority stake came from the Bloomberg report on Feb. 3. However, the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Binance’s chief business officer Yibo Ling only said to Bloomberg that Binance has taken a “meaningful” equity position in GOPAX.

Yibo Ling added:

The fundamental thrust of this deal was to support customers and make sure that any customers who want to withdraw their assets have the ability to do so.

However, the GOPAX deal was leaked a month before the Bloomberg news. Local media outlet Decenter reported that Binance had closed the deal with GOPAX.

Another proof of this news could be the fact that CZ, the CEO of Binance, said during a press conference at the Web Summit 2022 in Lisbon that Binance is preparing to re-enter the South Korean market.

Binance spokesman told Forecast:

What we can say is given the position of the Korea market, we will always respect local regulations and ensure that we remain compliant in the case of any market entry.

Binance opened a branch in Korea in 2019 and offered crypto trading services to the local market in April 2020, but was forced to close it in December of the same year. They also discontinued global trading services for South Koreans because local regulators didn’t allow unregistered foreign exchanges to serve Korean citizens.