Upbit has pushed almost all customer assets into offline storage after a 44.5 billion won hack, moving to keep 99% of funds in cold wallets and turning the Solana-based exploit into a line in the sand for Korean exchange security.
Upbit Moves Funds to Cold Storage
The change follows a late‑November incident in which attackers siphoned roughly 44.5 billion won (about 30–33 million dollars) in Solana ecosystem tokens from Upbit’s hot wallets, triggering emergency halts on deposits and withdrawals. The stolen assets spanned several Solana-based coins, including SOL and popular DeFi and memecoins, and forced the exchange to freeze additional funds in cooperation with projects and other platforms.
Upbit has said it will cover user losses from its own reserves and confirmed that engineers uncovered and fixed a critical wallet vulnerability during the forensic review. As part of the overhaul, the exchange has shifted to a posture where 99% of all crypto assets sit in offline cold wallets, leaving only a thin liquidity buffer online for daily trading and withdrawals.
Users Benefit from Cold Storage
Upbit’s shift toward near‑total cold storage minimizes the on‑chain attack surface but introduces trade‑offs for speed and convenience. Large withdrawals and some token transfers will now depend on controlled, often manual processes to move assets from cold to hot wallets, which can slow down peak‑time activity but reduces the risk that another vulnerability drains sizable balances in minutes.
Security experts say the move puts Upbit in line with so‑called “fortress” custody models used by the most conservative exchanges and custodians, where offline key management, multi‑sig approvals, and hardware isolation act as primary defenses. For Korean regulators who want to position the country as a credible digital‑asset hub while curbing systemic risk, the incident and the 99% cold‑storage pivot will likely become a reference point in coming guidance on wallet design, key management and incident disclosure.
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