In a coordinated display of operational diligence, two of South Korea's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, have announced temporary suspensions of deposit and withdrawal services for specific tokens to facilitate critical network upgrades.
Upbit has suspended all POKT deposit and withdrawal services starting at 9:00 a.m. UTC on February 10. This action is directly tied to the integration of Pocket Network's 'Phoenix v2' protocol upgrade. The exchange confirmed that trading of POKT against the Korean Won (KRW) and Bitcoin (BTC) will remain operational during this period. Upbit has not provided an exact duration for the suspension, but typical maintenance for such upgrades ranges from several hours to a full day.
Concurrently, Bithumb will suspend all deposit and withdrawal services for the Inisia (INIT) token starting at 2:00 a.m. UTC on February 17. This measure supports a crucial network upgrade for the Inisia blockchain. Similar to Upbit's procedure, Bithumb will allow INIT trading against KRW and other pairs to continue uninterrupted.
Industry analysts, including Dr. Mina Choi, a blockchain infrastructure researcher at the Seoul Digital Asset Institute, view these suspensions as a standard and responsible practice. "When a core blockchain protocol undergoes a significant upgrade, exchanges have a fiduciary duty to pause deposits and withdrawals," explains Dr. Choi. This prevents users from accidentally sending transactions to an old, unsupported chain version, which could result in permanent loss of funds.
Data from CryptoExchangeMonitor indicates that in 2024 alone, top-20 global exchanges executed over 1,200 similar temporary suspensions for network upgrades, with zero incidents of user fund loss attributed to properly coordinated halts. Both exchanges have assured users that all token balances held on their platforms remain safe and unchanged during the maintenance windows.
