Global cryptocurrency exchange OKX and Korea Investment & Securities are reportedly looking to acquire approximately 20% stakes each in Coinone, a cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korea.

 

To maximize capital flow, the acquisition will involve Coinone issuing new equity shares to OKX and its acquisition partner, rather than selling shares held by existing shareholders. Although the acquisition is, for now, just a financial investment, some industry observers have opined that OKX may become more involved in the exchange’s managerial activities in the future.

 

Currently, The One Group, a private investment company managed by Cha Myung hoon, Coinone’s founder, owns about 34.30% of Coinone, followed by Com2uS Holdings, a South Korean gaming firm, which owns 21.95%, and Com2uS Plus, one of its entities, which owns 16.47 percent. Coinone's CEO, Cha Myung-hoon, owns 19.14%.

 

If successful, this will be the third time a global cryptocurrency exchange has acquired a stake in a South Korean exchange. In 2022, crypto exchange Crypto.com fully acquired OK BIT, a small South Korean crypto exchange, while in 2025, Binance acquired a 67% majority stake in Gopax, one of South Korea’s top five crypto exchanges.

 

Crypto Acquisitions on the Rise

The partial acquisition of Coinone by OKX comes at the same time as Hana Bank, one of South Korea’s largest commercial banks, announced a 6.55% stake acquisition in Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea.

 

Kraken, through its parent company Payward, has also agreed to acquire Reap, a payments infrastructure firm based in Hong Kong, for about $600 million, just a few weeks after it acquired Bitnomial for $550 million in April.

 

Several other crypto entities have also been involved in acquisitions, including the crypto exchange Bullish, which acquired Equiniti for $4.2 billion, and MoonPay, which recently acquired Dawn Labs.

 

According to a report from Architect Partners, about 89 crypto acquisition deals were completed in the previous quarter, with approximately $3.2 billion spent on crypto-related acquisitions, a significant increase from the first quarter of 2025, which recorded 61 deals and $2.2 billion in deal value.

 

 

Flow Foundation is seeking a court order in Seoul to halt the planned delisting of the FLOW token on three South Korean exchanges following an exploit on the protocol in December. 

 

The Flow Foundation and its parent company, Dapper Labs, filed a motion with the Seoul Central District Court on Monday to block the delisting of the FLOW token from three South Korean exchanges.

 

This move is coming months after the Layer 1 blockchain protocol suffered a security incident in December, which led to several exchanges temporarily stopping the trading of the FLOW token at the time. However, three major Korean exchanges; Upbit, Bithumb, and Coinone, have moved to permanently stop the trading of the token on their exchanges on March 16.

 

 

Flow’s Security Incident

On December 27, 2025, Flow suffered a protocol-level exploit that resulted in losses of about $3.9 million. The breach was caused by a flaw in the smart-contract runtime within Flow’s execution layer, which allowed the attacker to exploit vulnerabilities in Cadence. 

 

Cadence is Flow’s smart contract runtime. By exploiting the flaw in Cadence, the attacker was able to duplicate Flow tokens instead of properly minting them. 

 

After duplicating the tokens, the attacker attempted to bridge them out of the protocol using cross-chain bridges such as Celer, deBridge, Relay, and Stargate. However, this abnormal activity was detected by Flow’s validator network, which placed the blockchain in read-only mode, halting further asset transfers. 

 

This incident led to a sharp decline in the price of the FLOW token. Prior to the breach, FLOW was trading at around $0.17, but it fell over 40% to roughly $0.097 within hours of the exploit being announced. 

 

Image credit: Tradingview

 

The incident also affected the token’s market cap. Before the breach, FLOW had a market cap of around $280–284 million. After the breach, it fell to approximately $164–170 million. Although the breach directly resulted in a $3.9 million loss, the protocol’s total market value dropped by over $110 million. 

Image credit: Coingecko

 

Following remediation efforts after the incident, the Flow Foundation claimed that every major global exchange has independently reviewed and restored FLOW token trading on their platforms.

 

According to the foundation, the FLOW token remains fully available and tradeable on major exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Gate.io, HTX, and Bybit, with Korbit being the only Korean exchange still supporting the trading of FLOW.