Upbit, South Korea's largest crypto exchange, said in a Friday notice that it will end trading support for BONK on Sept. 7, removing its BONK/KRW and BONK/USDT markets.
- The exchange said the reasons behind an earlier warning designation hadn't been resolved following further review.
- Upbit pointed to what it described as an unresolved security incident involving the asset and concerns that information potentially material to investors hadn't been disclosed in a timely manner.
BONK, currently the third largest Solana memecoin by market cap, according to CoinGecko data, was placed under review by Upbit on July 7.
That happened just a day after BonkDAO, the decentralized organization that oversees BONK's treasury and governance, said a malicious governance proposal had drained an estimated $20 million worth of BONK from its treasury.
The attacker appears to have spent roughly $4.4 million buying enough BONK to meet the DAO's 1% governance quorum.
- The proposal passed with just seven wallets participating and contained an instruction transferring about 4.43 trillion BONK from the treasury to the attacker's wallet.
Upbit temporarily suspended BONK deposits and withdrawals following the incident before placing the token under review. Roughly a month later, the exchange concluded that the issues hadn't been sufficiently resolved and decided to terminate trading support.
A big market to lose
The loss of Upbit could be particularly significant for BONK because the exchange has at times accounted for an unusually large chunk of the token's entire market.
That put Upbit's share at roughly 45% of the token's total trading volume.
- For comparison, Binance's largest BONK market handled about $6.2 million over the same period, roughly a tenth of Upbit's volume.
- Even Binance's BONK/USDT and BONK/TRY markets combined handled only about $9 million.
Upbit added a Korean won trading pair for BONK on Nov. 20, 2024. Its own market data shows BONK/KRW hit its record high of 0.08464 won that same day.
The timing, of course, doesn't establish that Upbit's listing caused the record price. But the exchange went on to become an unusually large source of BONK trading activity.
Chart showing BONK/USD price as of Aug. 7. Source: CoinGecko
- BONK is down roughly 10% on the day, trading near $0.0000025. The token is now about 95.7% below its all-time high.
Upbit users will be able to withdraw BONK until Oct. 7, a month after trading ends. Remaining open orders will be canceled when trading support ends.
- The decision wasn't unanimous across South Korea's major exchanges.
- Coinone, another South Korean crypto exchange, also said Friday that it will terminate trading support for BONK after concluding that it hadn't seen enough evidence that the reasons behind its warning designation had been resolved.
- Bithumb, however, reached the opposite conclusion. The exchange said Friday that it considered the reasons behind its warning resolved and removed the designation, with BONK deposits set to resume later that day.