Crypto exchange Binance has acquired a majority stake in South Korean crypto exchange GOPAX. Funding for the acquisition came from the Binance-led “Industry Recovery Initiative”.
It marks Binance's re-entry into the South Korean crypto market after two years by acquiring GOPAX, which is among the top five crypto exchanges in South Korea.
Crypto exchange Binance has acquired South Korean crypto exchange GOPAX, Bloomberg reported on February 3. Last month, Binance announced that it had completed due diligence for the acquisition of GOPAX.
Talks are now in the final stages as Binance is looking to buy a majority stake from CEO Lee Jun-haeng, who has a 41.2% stake in Gopax. Barry's Silbert Digital Currency Group is the second largest shareholder of GOPAX.
Commenting on the deal, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said:
"We hope this move will rebuild Korea's crypto and blockchain industry."
Binance's CEO is actively looking for ways to re-enter South Korea after it exits in January 2021. South Korea is one of the world's largest crypto economies, a brilliant talent pool, and an attractive market community for Binance. The expansion of South Korea will be most important for Binance to establish leadership in the next wave of blockchain and web3 development.
The FTX and Genesis contagion impacted Binance's GOPAX acquisition deal when Genesis suspended customer withdrawals and redemptions following FTX's bankruptcy. GOPAX will have to refund about $47 million to customers of its wealth management product GoFi, which were affected by Genesis' decision to stop redemptions.
Binance plans to inject capital into GOPAX so that customer withdrawals and interest payments can be made for GoFi revenue products.
"The fundamental core of this agreement is to support customers and ensure that any customer who wants to withdraw their assets has the ability to do so," Yibo Ling, chief business officer at Binance.
