Upbit is ceasing support for trading $BONK on Monday, thereby taking away one of the two major South Korean exchanges for the Solana meme coin, while its rival Bithumb goes the other way and supports it.
The end of trading comes as a matter of urgency for traders from Korea, as Upbit is removing the $BONK/KRW and $BONK/USDT pairs at 15:00 KST on September 7, 2026, which means the cancellation of open orders. Withdrawals for $BONK will be available until October 7.
Korean markets carry weight outside of the exchange in question. The Asia Capital Markets Report 2026 by the OECD indicates Korea and India saw the highest absolute inflow of crypto-assets in Asia in the 12 months leading to June 2025.
Two exchanges, one incident, opposite calls
On July 7, Upbit and Bithumb put $BONK under the designation of “trading caution.” The concern that led to this designation is mentioned in a notification from Bithumb on July 7: it has to do with a security incident, the cause of which was either unknown or unresolved, as well as whether any significant information has been disclosed in a timely manner.
A month later, the two exchanges parted ways.
On August 7, Bithumb lifted its caution status, claiming that the issues leading to the designation had been resolved, and resumed taking deposits later that day. In contrast, Upbit argued that the grounds for its caution status “have not been resolved” and took steps to halt trading.
This is allowed under Upbit’s market-alert framework. When an issue has been solved, a caution status can be lifted. Otherwise, trading support can be stopped. Bithumb decided to go one way, while Upbit preferred the other.
The hack behind the flag
The incident involved BonkDAO, a treasury managed by the community that is responsible for the $BONK ecosystem. An announcement made by $BONK via its account on X stated that “$BONK and BonkDAO are two distinct entities,” and added that the attack hit the DAO treasury and did not have an effect on any other $BONK operations.
Halborn, a blockchain security company, estimated BonkDAO’s losses to be $20 million. According to their research, the perpetrator of the attack employed a harmful governance proposal to transfer 4.43 trillion $BONK out of the treasury. The hacker spent approximately $4.4 million to obtain majority voting rights, winning approximately 99.878% of the votes until the proposal was carried out without any time lock.
While the DAO differs considerably from the wider token ecosystem, that does not mean that review by an exchange is out of the question. Things such as remediation, disclosure, and protection of investors may still play as much of a role in this case as the security of the actual contract.
What the listing rules actually screen for
DAXA’s Best Practices for Listing Virtual Assets applies to both exchanges and assists in maintaining common minimum standards, although maintaining some discretion in judgment. The framework looks at the reliability of issuers, investor protection, safeguards, and regulatory compliance. The framework particularly revolves around any unresolved hacking incidents and any failures to disclose problems that would be important to prospective investors and the value of the asset as a whole.
The concerns regarding $BONK are parallel to those that arise as part of the framework. While the rules are the same, determining whether or not a project acted in order to deal with these issues is something that goes to the exchanges’ discretion. This explains why Bithumb gave a green light to $BONK while Upbit decided to delist it.
Price and volume climb into the delisting
$BONK is experiencing an increase in trading price as its delisting on Upbit approaches. According to CoinMarketCap, $BONK was around $0.00000345, about 6.1% higher over 24 hours, with about $134 million in trades and a market cap of about $303 million.
A similar event of $BONK’s price increase was observed by Cryptopolitan’s $BONK price-tracking service on September 6, when its price went up by about 4.3% and around $104.6 million in trading.
While it is unclear if this strength is attributed to the positioning before Upbit’s cut-off time, the transferring of trades to other exchanges, or meme coin momentum, there is clarity regarding the timing. The trading activity and prices of $BONK are rising as one of South Korea’s largest exchanges is about to halt trading of the coin.
An Upbit delisting is unlikely to determine $BONK’s fate globally. The token will remain available on Binance, Coinbase, Bybit, Kraken and other exchanges, as well as on Solana-based decentralized exchanges. But losing a major retail market could weigh on liquidity and sentiment, while prompting other exchanges to reassess the token’s risk profile.
