Binance shared the news of planning to close a deal to buy a majority stake in Gopax, the South Korean crypto exchange. The deal has been agreed upon in principle, per the Outlet’s claims.  However, a few remaining legal steps to finalize the deals need to be cleared out to make the deal final.

The deal has been in the pipeline for several months, and the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, will be in the direct line into the high-volume market of South Korea. Gopax is one of the five domestic exchanges with a fiat KRW trading license. The crypto exchange Gopax also has a banking deal with Joenbunk Bank, which provides individual accounts for all customers of Gopax.

As per the reports, Gopax denies having the deal completed and has said that it was “unable to confirm” the veracity or otherwise of the reports. However, the Korean News hub, Decenter, shared that the deal has “completed” its due diligence for the “acquisition of Gopax.” The news agency shared that Binance was “taking the final steps” needed before “confirming the procedure.”

The news hub also informed that an anonymous individual related to the deal has confirmed that crypto exchange Binance had “planned to announce the acquisition around Christmas last year” however, the media informed that a few final obstacles are still there.

Decenter further reported that it “cannot rule out the possibility that the [South Korean] financial authorities, whose stance on investor protection has become stronger in recent times, will impose direct or indirect sanctions on this takeover.”

Binance also plans to obtain a controlling 41.2% stake from Gopax’s CEO as well as the biggest single shareholder Lee Jun-haeng. However, according to Decenter, Binance wants to retain the management team of Gopax for a certain time period.

The South Korean market is dominated by Upbit at present, and Gopax owns a very small share of it i.e. around 01%. As per Decenter’s estimates, Upbit has 80% of the market share.

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