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Gopax partners with Jeonbuk Bank

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By Anna J. Park
  • Published KST
  • Updated KST

Gopax CEO Lee Jun-haeng / Courtesy of Streami (Gopax)

By Anna J. Park

Cryptocurrency exchange Gopax has taken a meaningful step by becoming one of the major coin exchanges in the country, successfully partnering with Jeonbuk Bank for the verification of its account holders' real names.

The financial authorities required local cryptocurrency exchanges last year to partner up with commercial banks to verify the real identities of account holders, in a move to regulate the country's cryptocurrency market in a more transparent manner.

Gopax is one of the country's early major coin exchanges, established by its CEO Lee Jun-haeng in 2016, even earlier than the country's current largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit opened in 2017.

Despite its early start, the coin exchange struggled to find a commercial banking partner. It had negotiated with various banks including Jeonbuk Bank last autumn to meet a deadline set by the financial authorities, but failed to secure a partnership back then.

With its successful partnership with Jeonbuk Bank, the coin exchange is finally eligible to register with the financial authorities in order to resume its Korean won-denominated cryptocurrency trading, which had been shut down since last September.

However, the specific timeline for the resumption of won-denominated trading is not yet known. Only trading among cryptocurrencies is possible as of now. In order to resume trading via Korean won, the exchange has to go through the registration process of the financial authorities.

Currently, only four other cryptocurrency exchanges ― Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit ― offer won-denominated cryptocurrency trading in the country. Only 26 coin exchanges successfully registered with the financial authorities last autumn, 21 of which have only coin-based trading markets.

Now that Gopax has met the prerequisite of partnering up with a bank, the current market structure centering on the four major exchanges is likely to transform into a five-way competition.