Bithumb, the Seoul-based exchange that once dominated South Korea's retail crypto market, confirmed plans to pursue a KOSDAQ listing in 2028, with Samsung Securities named as lead manager and Samjong KPMG contracted as listing advisor through 2027. The company filed for a preliminary listing review in 2027. 2028 is now the third IPO target date the company has set, having previously aimed for 2025 and then 2027. Company officials acknowledged the timeline remains conditional, noting that market conditions and the pace of regulatory review could force further changes.

The announcement arrives after one of the most turbulent periods in Bithumb's recent history, spanning from the arrest of de facto owner Kang Jong-hyun in February 2023 through the CEO bribery booking in June 2026. On February 6, 2026, a staff member running a promotional campaign entered "BTC" where the system expected "KRW," causing Bithumb's internal ledger to credit approximately 620,000 BTC to event participants. At prevailing prices, that figure represented roughly $43 billion in phantom Bitcoin, more than 13 times Bithumb's actual BTC reserves of around 46,000 BTC. The error never reached the blockchain and Bithumb recovered nearly all affected funds, pledging 110 percent compensation to impacted traders. Still, the price of BTC on Bithumb's own platform dropped 15 percent during the resulting panic. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) responded four days later by converting its ongoing site review into a high-intensity inspection. In March 2026, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) fined Bithumb 36.8 billion KRW (roughly $25 million) and imposed a six-month partial operating suspension for failing to verify identity for more than 6.65 million user accounts. Bithumb obtained a stay on the suspension from the Seoul Administrative Court in May 2026, allowing normal operations to continue while the case proceeds.

The governance problems extend well beyond the ledger error. In June 2026, CEO Lee Jae-won was booked as a bribery suspect. A former CEO, Lee Sang-jun, was sentenced to two years in prison for accepting bribes to list altcoins on the exchange. Kang Jong-hyun, widely identified as the exchange's de facto owner without holding a formal ownership position, was arrested in February 2023 for stock price manipulation and embezzlement totaling approximately $48 million. As of April 2025, prosecutors were seeking an 18-month prison sentence; the current status of the case had not been confirmed at the time of publication. Bithumb Holdings currently controls about 73 percent of the exchange, and former Chairman Lee Jung-hoon, identified as the largest shareholder of Bithumb Holdings, has also faced regulatory scrutiny. The opacity of the exchange's ownership structure has drawn sustained attention from regulators, and Bithumb's IPO compliance push is largely a response to that sustained regulatory and legal pressure rather than a voluntary reform initiative.

As part of its IPO governance overhaul, and in line with requirements under South Korea's Virtual Asset User Protection Act (VAUPA), which took effect in July 2024, Bithumb has undertaken a series of structural changes. The exchange completed a corporate split in 2025, separating core trading operations from investment activities under a new entity called Bithumb Asset. It switched from Korean K-GAAP to K-IFRS accounting standards in 2026, appointed a new auditor in Jung Yeon-dae, a tax expert affiliated with Sogang University, established a 100 billion KRW (approximately $68 million) user protection fund, and doubled its bond ceiling to 300 billion KRW to support pre-IPO liquidity. VAUPA requires exchanges to keep at least 80 percent of customer assets in cold storage and mandates surveillance systems for market manipulation and insider trading. A company spokesperson said the listing effort was "more than a listing," describing it as "an effort to raise the transparency and stability of a cryptocurrency exchange to the level expected of regulated financial institutions."

The financials tell a mixed story. Bithumb posted 651 billion KRW (about $430 million) in revenue for 2025 with net profit of roughly $51 million. But market share is eroding. Q1 2026 trading volume fell 31.3 percent quarter over quarter to 83.9 trillion KRW, and Bithumb's share of the five-exchange KRW market dropped from 30.7 percent to 27.1 percent. Upbit, operated by Dunamu, controls roughly 70 percent of domestic volume and is pursuing its own public listing on Nasdaq in 2026. Dunamu's competitive scale has been amplified by its merger with Naver Financial, and the Nasdaq listing is being pursued at a reported deal valuation between $10.3 billion and $14.5 billion, with some analysts projecting a figure as high as $34.5 billion. South Korea's combined exchange volume across the five main KRW platforms fell 54.6 percent year over year in the first half of 2026.

For observers across Asia and beyond, the Bithumb story carries practical lessons. South Korea has approximately 18 million retail crypto users, making it one of the most concentrated consumer crypto markets in the world. The FSS response to the ledger error, which triggered mandatory cold storage audits and on-site inspections across all Korean exchanges, illustrates how quickly regulators move when internal controls fail at scale. For exchanges operating in India, Nigeria, Kenya, or Pakistan with leaner infrastructure and less formal oversight, that sequence of events is a useful reference point. At the same time, the parallel push by both Upbit and Bithumb to achieve public listings signals that the path from crypto startup to regulated financial institution is becoming a concrete strategic objective in Asia, not just a distant aspiration. Whether Bithumb clears that bar by 2028 will depend heavily on how its legal cases resolve.