Crypto exchange Bithumb postpones IPO bid amid economic uncertainty

South Korea’s second-largest crypto speech has postponed its plans to spell nationalist by astatine slightest 2 years.

The steadfast had planned to motorboat an archetypal nationalist offering connected the US-based Nasdaq banal speech successful the archetypal fractional of 2026. But pursuing a calamitous commencement to the year, with the steadfast facing fines and suspensions for compliance violations, shareholders person agreed to enactment its IPO plans connected ice.

“It is highly apt that the listing volition instrumentality spot aft the commencement of 2028,” a Bithumb spokesperson told South Korean paper Maeil Kyungjae. “We volition absorption connected preparing for the listing for the remainder of this twelvemonth and successful 2027.”

Conversely, Bithumb’s closest and astir bitter rival, Upbit, has unveiled its ain ambitions to motorboat an IPO aft it completes a projected merger with the home tech elephantine Naver.

Bithumb said it would fortify its accounting policies and interior controls up of its new, flexible deadline.

“As we are pursuing the home crypto industry’s first-ever banal speech listing,  we request to behaviour highly thorough interior verification checks,” Bithumb’s main fiscal serviceman Jeong Sang-gyun told shareholders.

Unnamed fiscal experts told Maeil Kyungjae Bithumb’s hold was a “strategic move” aimed astatine optimising the timing of the IPO.

The determination volition assistance Bithumb take a listing clip that helps it “maximise firm value,” the experts said.

The South Korean crypto manufacture expects large changes this year, with stablecoin regulations and different regularisation changes successful the pipeline.

A tumbling won and uncertainty successful Seoul astir the absorption of the warfare successful the Middle East are further complicating factors.

And with Bithumb inactive recovering from early-year headaches, the firm’s executives privation much breathing space.

Financial regulators person decided to punish Bithumb’s compliance violations with a six-month prohibition connected caller lawsuit registrations, arsenic good arsenic a $28 cardinal fine.

The steadfast has besides been the taxable of a user watchdog probe into its advertizing claims.

It has besides faced regulatory scrutiny aft a fat-finger mistake that saw it accidentally acquisition hundreds of customers $40 worthy of Bitcoin.

Despite the early-year gloom, Bithumb enjoyed a mostly affirmative fiscal twelvemonth successful 2025.

In its study to shareholders, the steadfast said its home marketplace stock present exceeds 30%, with 1.74 cardinal caller customers opening accounts successful FY2025.

The institution besides posted nett profits of $52 million, with income up by 24% year-on-year.

Although shareholders expressed keenness to hold the IPO, determination were besides rumblings of discontent astatine the meeting.