Upbit is ceasing assist for buying and selling $BONK on Monday, thereby taking away one of many two main South Korean exchanges for the Solana meme coin, whereas its rival Bithumb goes the opposite means and helps it.
The top of buying and selling comes as a matter of urgency for merchants from Korea, as Upbit is eradicating the $BONK/KRW and $BONK/USDT pairs at 15:00 KST on September 7, 2026, which suggests the cancellation of open orders. Withdrawals for $BONK will likely be accessible till October 7.
Korean markets carry weight exterior of the alternate in query. The Asia Capital Markets Report 2026 by the OECD signifies Korea and India noticed the very best absolute influx of crypto-assets in Asia within the 12 months resulting in June 2025.
Two exchanges, one incident, reverse calls
On July 7, Upbit and Bithumb put $BONK beneath the designation of “buying and selling warning.” The priority that led to this designation is talked about in a notification from Bithumb on July 7: it has to do with a safety incident, the reason for which was both unknown or unresolved, in addition to whether or not any important data has been disclosed in a well timed method.
A month later, the 2 exchanges parted methods.
On August 7, Bithumb lifted its warning standing, claiming that the problems resulting in the designation had been resolved, and resumed taking deposits later that day. In distinction, Upbit argued that the grounds for its warning standing “haven’t been resolved” and took steps to halt buying and selling.
That is allowed beneath Upbit’s market-alert framework. When a problem has been solved, a warning standing will be lifted. In any other case, buying and selling assist will be stopped. Bithumb determined to go a technique, whereas Upbit most popular the opposite.
The hack behind the flag
The incident concerned BonkDAO, a treasury managed by the neighborhood that’s answerable for the $BONK ecosystem. An announcement made by $BONK through its account on X acknowledged that “$BONK and BonkDAO are two distinct entities,” and added that the assault hit the DAO treasury and didn’t impact every other $BONK operations.
Halborn, a blockchain safety firm, estimated BonkDAO’s losses to be $20 million. In keeping with their analysis, the perpetrator of the assault employed a dangerous governance proposal to switch 4.43 trillion $BONK out of the treasury. The hacker spent roughly $4.4 million to acquire majority voting rights, successful roughly 99.878% of the votes till the proposal was carried out with none time lock.
Whereas the DAO differs significantly from the broader token ecosystem, that doesn’t imply that evaluate by an alternate is out of the query. Issues comparable to remediation, disclosure, and safety of traders should play as a lot of a job on this case because the safety of the particular contract.
What the itemizing guidelines really display screen for
DAXA’s Greatest Practices for Itemizing Digital Belongings applies to each exchanges and assists in sustaining frequent minimal requirements, though sustaining some discretion in judgment. The framework seems to be on the reliability of issuers, investor safety, safeguards, and regulatory compliance. The framework notably revolves round any unresolved hacking incidents and any failures to reveal issues that might be essential to potential traders and the worth of the asset as an entire.
The considerations concerning $BONK are parallel to people who come up as a part of the framework. Whereas the foundations are the identical, figuring out whether or not or not a venture acted in an effort to cope with these points is one thing that goes to the exchanges’ discretion. This explains why Bithumb gave a inexperienced gentle to $BONK whereas Upbit determined to delist it.
Worth and quantity climb into the delisting
$BONK is experiencing a rise in buying and selling value as its delisting on Upbit approaches. In keeping with CoinMarketCap, $BONK was round $0.00000345, about 6.1% larger over 24 hours, with about $134 million in trades and a market cap of about $303 million.
An identical occasion of $BONK’s value enhance was noticed by Cryptopolitan’s $BONK price-tracking service on September 6, when its value went up by about 4.3% and round $104.6 million in buying and selling.
Whereas it’s unclear if this energy is attributed to the positioning earlier than Upbit’s cut-off time, the transferring of trades to different exchanges, or meme coin momentum, there’s readability concerning the timing. The buying and selling exercise and costs of $BONK are rising as considered one of South Korea’s largest exchanges is about to halt buying and selling of the coin.
An Upbit delisting is unlikely to find out $BONK’s destiny globally. The token will stay accessible on Binance, Coinbase, Bybit, Kraken and different exchanges, in addition to on Solana-based decentralized exchanges. However shedding a serious retail market may weigh on liquidity and sentiment, whereas prompting different exchanges to reassess the token’s danger profile.
