South Korea’s Bithumb crypto exchange delays IPO until after 2028 – Details

Bithumb, a South Korean crypto exchange’s initial public offering (IPO), which was earlier planned for 2027, has now shifted to sometime after 2028.

According to a recent report published by Maeil Business News Korea, Bithumb CFO Jeong Sang-gyun said that the firm had signed an “IPO advisory contract with Samjong KPMG” and added, 

We are currently in the process of preparing to strengthen accounting policies and internal controls, and as we are pursuing the industry’s first listing, we are conducting thorough internal verification.

Reason behind the delay

The firm believes this delay is not because of negligence but a “strategic move” to “maximise corporate value” with the ever-changing laws and regulations.

Here, Sang-gyun refers to the Framework Act on Digital Assets, which is all set to be approved by H2 2026. 

Additionally, there are a few shareholders who are expecting the company to start paying dividends again. This is in correlation to the” improvements in performance”, but in turn, no dividends to the shareholders.

In fact, one shareholder even compared Bithumb to its competitor Dunamu, which pays dividends. In response to this, CEO Lee Jae-won argued, 

Last year, considering the competitive market conditions, we concentrated capital on expanding the company’s market share and increasing corporate value.

Bithumb’s 2025 stats and current market dynamics

This coincided with the firm’s 12th fiscal year financial report approved on the last day of Q1 2026. According to the report, the crypto exchange has recorded total assets worth 3.3249 trillion and total liabilities nearing 2.461 trillion in 2025.

Still, in 2025, Bithumb didn’t see any talks around IPO heating up.  

Yet, despite such bottlenecks, Bithumb trading volume stood at $523,156,667 at press time, after a 10.2% in the past 24 hours.

Additionally, as per CryptoQuant, the Bithumb’s outflow chart showed that more Bitcoin [BTC] was being deposited than withdrawn.

Simply put, there’s a surge in selling pressure, but the sideways price movement of Bitcoin hints that bears and bulls are trying to balance things out. 

This followed a recent incident wherein the exchange was caught up in an investigation. The investigation was for sending over $40 billion worth of Bitcoin to customers, accidentally to users.

All this might have pushed Bithumb to rethink its timeline for IPO to make things work in its favour.

Final Summary

• Bithumb’s delay looks like a strategic delay, not merely signs of negligence or procrastination.
• Growing shareholder dissatisfaction reflects a huge gap between the company’s profit and investors’ reward.