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Crypto exchange Binance has acquired a majority stake in South Korea’s crypto exchange GOPAX. The funding for the acquisition came from Binance-led “Industry Recovery Initiative.”
It marks the re-entry of Binance into South Korea’s crypto market after two years by acquiring GOPAX, which is among the top five crypto exchanges in South Korea.
Binance Officially Re-Enters South Korea With GOPAX Acquisition
Crypto exchange Binance has acquired South Korea’s crypto exchange GOPAX, reported Bloomberg on February 3. Last month, Binance announced that it has completed due diligence on the acquisition of GOPAX.
The discussions reached the final stage as Binance was looking to buy a majority stake from CEO Lee Jun-haeng, who has a 41.2% stake in Gopax. Barry’s Silbert’s Digital Currency Group is the second largest shareholder of GOPAX.
Commenting on the deal, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said:
“We hope that taking this step with GOPAX will further rebuild the Korean crypto and blockchain industry.”
Binance CEO was actively looking to re-enter South Korea after it exited in January 2021. South Korea has one of the world’s largest crypto economies, an excellent talent pool, and a startup community, which is still an attractive market for Binance. The South Korean expansion will be the most important for Binance to establish leadership in the next wave of blockchain and web3 developments.
GOPAX Customers Hit With Genesis Contagion
FTX and Genesis contagion impacted Binance’s GOPAX acquisition deal as Genesis suspended customer withdrawals and redemptions after FTX’s bankruptcy. GOPAX needed to repay about $47 million to customers of its wealth management product GoFi, which was affected by Genesis’ decision to halt redemptions.
Binance plans to inject capital into GOPAX so that customer withdrawals and interest payments can be made for yield product GoFi.
“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,” Yibo Ling, the chief business officer at Binance.
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